Binder - 02 Read online

  “People think the same thing about my hometown,” I observed. You wear the dirt under your fingernails forever.

  “A mine town is a place that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily,” Seth, the big guy, said somberly.

  “Are you quoting Flannery O’Connor?”

  “Paraphrasin’. We may be miners, but it don’t mean we ain’t readers,” Seth replied, his face dead serious. He held that expression for a moment before starting to chuckle. The sound rattled in his chest and rolled around his throat until it was real laughter that shook the faded green paint on the wooden panels of the room. Braden laughed more at Seth than the joke and after a moment, Cale joined in. So did I.

  We started talking for real then, trading stories of small town life. I found myself liking Cale in spite of how quick he’d been to pull a pair of brass knuckles on me. By the time we hit our fourth refill, I was starting to get hazy even though I’d been to the bathroom twice to stick a finger down my throat. It seemed like the right time to ask about the girl again.

  “Cale, why did things get out of hand with these kids? Isn’t it normal to have protestors at a big surface mine?”

  Cale had a warm bourbon glow and I could tell he wanted to help me. He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “It warn’t miners done that. I’m not sayin’ we loved those eco-nuts. They tied up things pretty good the last coupla’ months, that’s for sure. Ain’t been no layoffs, though, and as long as they got you clocked in, they got to pay you whether you can get to your rig or some dumbass teenager is all laid out on it. They may think we’re hillbillies, but nobody hates those kids ’cept management. And no-fuckin-body likes management.” They clinked glasses to that. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth: if we got a call from upstairs tellin’ us to tweak up those kids, we’d’a done it. But nobody got that call or I’d’aknowed about it.”

  “But you were ready to rough me up for asking about one of the protestors.”

  “A man comes inta’ my damn drinking club askin’ damn stupid questions, I’m gonna tweak him up. But I’m not gonna stomp on some soft college kid just ’cause she thinks we’re killin’ the damn planet. You look like you’d go a round or two jus’ for the fun, anyways.”

  I knew the truth when I heard it, but even if I hadn’t, I would have taken Cale at his word. He wasn’t showing the caution of a man wondering if the law was about to come down on him and his friends. I know something about company towns and I suspected that if a bunch of miners assaulted those kids, a man like Cale would have heard about it. But that left me with more questions than I had when I was sober.

  “Do you know where those kids are staying?”

  Cale looked stumped but Braden spoke up. “I heard they camped up in a holler ’tween here ’n’ the site. Which’n was that?” he asked himself. “Stone holler?” Seth nodded agreement. Or maybe he was just drunk.

  An hour later I walked carefully back to my motel, grateful that I had chosen one that I could reach by foot from the bar. I inhaled slowly to steady myself, dragging in the smell of burning wood fires. A damp wind was blowing in my face, threatening rain but delivering only a cold chill. It was that time of year when fall tips toward winter and the world feels more dead than alive.

  3

  Friday

  I was surprised how warm it was when I pulled myself out of bed the next morning. Normally I’m up before dawn—then again, normally I don’t drink. It was still early when I forced myself to take a run that was more penance than exercise, but it was already well into the seventies in the last few days of October. Indian summer had always been my favorite time of year growing up—the days when you woke up expecting to wear a sweater but got to pull on a t-shirt instead.

  Instead of being happy, though, I felt disjointed and out-of-place in a myriad of small ways. The cozy, dilapidated Main Street on a small grid joined by Sycamore, Walnut, Elm and Oak Streets, the view of hills in the distance and the battered pickup trucks that crowded the church across the way could all have been ripped from my childhood, but the reproduction was imperfect. To an outsider, my Catskills town would be unlovely in its details. There, an overgrown lawn with an old Plymouth up on four cinderblocks is easier to spot than a flowerbed. The cement mill, tens of abandoned lots and miles of flecking paint and failing shingles all testify to our condition. But a sense of order persists. Our town center has its limits; we separate our commercial and residential despair.

  Hamlin had an advantage to start. The mill that loomed over Conestoga was absent, replaced by a coal mine somewhere over the horizon. But instead of a town built by settlers before a mill overtook it, Hamlin was unambiguously a mine town. Driving in the previous evening on Route 3, I’d been greeted by a row of modest houses on half-acre lots on one side of the road faced off against an industrial yard filled with monstrous steel pipes on the other. Hundred-year-old houses with rocking-chair porches were pushed up against cinderblock office buildings and small warehouses. It was hard to imagine sustaining the bucolic disbelief of childhood on those streets. But most people would say that about my town, too.

  I showered and found a diner a block from my motel. The eggs were good, and the sausage had a smoky flavor I’ve never tasted further north. I persuaded a waitress to part with the location of Stone Holler after confirming she had heard the “hippie kids” were camping there. I was tempted to check out of my motel but didn’t. Instead I left my single duffle bag on the bed but grabbed the large manila envelope I’d found propped inside the door when I returned from breakfast. My old boss hadn’t changed.

  I’d spent seven hours the day before driving from Conestoga to see the man in an office building just outside of the District of Columbia, and then another six and a half hours straight from there to a hospital in Charleston, only to be told the girl whose name I gave them had never been admitted. A triage nurse with thin lips and the faint stink of tobacco on her scrubs refused me access to any of the other protestors who’d been assaulted. With more than a dozen hysterical and grieving parents in the ER, I didn’t press the point. I’d been told as much before I started the trip but wanted to confirm it myself; nothing makes you look so much like an idiot as not checking your basic facts. I was eager to locate the Reclaim campsite because, truth be told, I wasn’t sure the girl I was looking for was actually missing.

  It was just one thing among many that had bothered me when I’d met my old Army commander. His office sits on the top floor of a nondescript building in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia. I hadn’t been inside the building in almost five years and felt an involuntary shiver run down my spine when I crossed the threshold.

  We call him Alpha. I know his real name—I learned it some years ago by accident—but it was never used around the Activity. That’s what they call his unit, as the actual designation is classified. Alpha had phoned me at 5:30 on Thursday morning. He’s an important man, the kind who briefs senators and presidents. He’s not the kind of man you say “no” to, not without careful consideration. I did that once. This time I agreed to meet with him when he asked me to come see him at lunchtime that day, even though a long drive and two angry sisters stood in my way.

  Alpha was somber that afternoon. It was a relative thing as the man never smiles, but I saw something in his eyes that told me to tread carefully.

  “I understand your mother is not well?” he asked. It was the closest he’d come to an apology for disrupting my family visit.

  “She had a stroke on Saturday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I need to ask a personal favor,” Alpha said, using neither my given name nor the old code name he’d have trotted out if he wanted me to run an errand for the Activity. This told me something in itself. Alpha is the kind of man who stockpiles favors while scrupulously avoiding owing them, a sort of Polonius in the government service.

  I was in Alpha’s debt because of some trouble I’d run
into the year before in Conestoga. Alpha ran interference with the FBI and kept me out of custody long enough for me to resolve things on my own. It ended up working out in his favor, but the man took a risk on me. It was the kind of obligation I would have honored even if it cost me my job. He knew that, too.

  “Of course, sir,” I replied, my back rigidly straight in a leather chair with arms. I’d rarely sat in his presence before.

  Alpha handed me a red folder from his desk. I flipped it open and saw the face of a girl at her high school graduation. Her dark hair had a streak of purple running through it that matched her robes, and she sported a nose ring.

  The folder also had news clippings from the morning papers. I’d already heard the story on the radio as I drove to Arlington. A group of protestors got beaten up in West Virginia and one of them had died.

  “Who’s the girl, sir?” I asked the obvious question.

  “Her name is Heather Hernandez. She’s the daughter of a friend. The picture is several years old, but I understand her appearance was the same when her parents last saw her. She left home at the beginning of the summer with a group called ‘Reclaim’ to protest the activities of the Transnational Coal Company in West Virginia. The parents’ only contact with her after she left was by e-mail. Her mother also saw some of her Facebook posts through a family friend. After the incident last night, Heather’s parents were unable to reach her and neither the police nor any West Virginia hospital has a record of Miss Hernandez being transported or admitted.”

  “Can we confirm she was on the bus last night?”

  “We cannot.”

  “Do you have any background on the other protestors?” I asked, thumbing through the documents in the folder.

  “There are some profiles at the end of your file,” Alpha answered, pulling on a pair of reading glasses and flipping open his copy. “Reclaim has a fairly typical composition for a radical environmental group: somewhere between thirty and fifty members, mostly young, almost all white or Asian and largely from the Northeast, California and the Pacific Northwest. A number of them took part in the Occupy Wall Street protests. Some have criminal records, but nothing unusual—one shoplifting conviction, some minor drug charges—but primarily a large number of arrests for disorderly conduct, vandalism and similar crimes. Three of Reclaim’s older protestors have the majority of the disorderly conduct citations and other misdemeanors consistent with protesting, but no criminal backgrounds.”

  “Do you have a complete profile of the leaders?” The folder only had photos, basic information and the police records.

  “No, but we can run that,” Alpha replied, making a note on a blank white pad sitting inside a leather portfolio on his desk.

  “Sir, I’m not a licensed investigator. That could create some problems, particularly with all the media attention on this story,” I pointed out.

  With a curt nod, Alpha pulled a sheet of paper from his file and handed it to me. “This letter from the governor of West Virginia welcomes you to the state to investigate Miss Hernandez’s whereabouts as a private citizen on behalf of the family. It may not carry any force of law, but it should suffice for your purposes. The governor has already called the Sheriff for Lincoln County and the Mayor of Hamlin, West Virginia to ensure you receive their cooperation. If you need any other help, please let me know.”

  “Could you get me a meeting with the head of the mining company? I’d like to get a look at the mine site where these kids were protesting without getting knocked on the head myself.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged. There is one more thing,” he said. I looked up from the file, knowing he was about to share the case’s most important detail. Nothing he’d told me so far justified the urgency of his request. He pulled a sheet of paper from his folder and handed it to me. It was the printout of an e-mail.

  Mommy I miss you. I’m going to run out of insulin and gas for my car on Monday and I wont be able to get more. Can you please help me? Sorry about things. Tell Dad I miss him. Love you. H

  “Heather’s mother received this yesterday morning?” I asked, looking at the date.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s an odd note.”

  “It is.”

  “Heather’s diabetic?”

  “Type 1, the kind that requires insulin.”

  “How often does she dose?”

  “She has an insulin pump she needs to use once a week with a medicine called Novalog. I’ll send some along with you in a cooler.”

  “And if she doesn’t get the medicine by Monday?”

  “Difficult to say, but hyperglycemia is the most likely consequence. For a Type 1 diabetic, that can lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, which can be life-threatening.”

  “Immediately?”

  “No, but she could become ill quickly.”

  “Isn’t that kind of diabetes pretty common? Shouldn’t it be easy for her to get insulin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is an even stranger note.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does Heather have health insurance?”

  “Yes, through her parents.”

  “So we’re talking about a gallon of gas and a ten dollar co-pay? That’s what’s preventing her from saving her own life? Is this just a plea for money?”

  “According to Miss Hernandez’s parents, that would be very unusual. She’s hard working, self-sufficient and very independent. She paid most of her own college expenses with jobs and a scholarship. Her mother suggested that if Heather needed to ask for money, she would have done it in another way.”

  “Does Heather have a cell phone?”

  “Yes, but it hasn’t connected to a cell network since yesterday afternoon. Her phone contract is with AT&T, though, so it would be roaming through most of that area. That mode causes heavy battery drain, so phones are often powered down when they are not being used. So we can’t draw conclusions from that alone.”

  “A car?”

  “A 1998 Toyota Tercel. Details are in the folder.”

  “And what do her parents think she’s really asking for in the note? Assuming it’s not about money?”

  “Some kind of help. They suggested that writing this note would have been extremely difficult for Miss Hernandez.”

  “Why? Pride?”

  “Possibly. I don’t know.”

  I hesitated for a moment, wary of territory I’d never trodden. I didn’t learn anything about Alpha’s personal life in the years I served under him.

  “Sir, you’re obviously willing to use government resources on this project, in addition to my time. Why is this particular family so important to you?”

  That’s when Alpha pulled out the glossy photo of the three of them. It was another graduation photo—this one with the girl’s parents. Her father was a Colonel, with the medals that proved he was the real deal and not just some paper tiger. The girl’s mother was a beauty: raven-haired with almost translucent skin. When I saw the uniform, things slipped into place. Colonel Hernandez looked to be of an age with Alpha.

  “I owe a great debt,” he said, “one that I cannot hope to repay. But if I can help them find Heather, I will.” He spoke slowly and evenly, but his voice was brittle. I understood the kind of obligation a battlefield creates. I noticed Colonel Hernandez’s POW ribbon then and knew Alpha didn’t wear one on his dress uniform. I wondered if that was part of the story.

  “Sir, I can’t promise you what I’ll find, or how quickly.”

  Alpha regarded me for a minute and I couldn’t tell if the ice in his cold blue eyes was hardening or thawing until he spoke. “Michael, I can’t think of a more qualified person for this task.”

  Alpha had never used my given name before, and I found myself dazed as he offered his hand, another unexpected acknowledgement from him that I was no longer his to command.

  4

  “My name’s Roxanne. Grab that pail and you can walk with me,” a sturdy, handsome woman about two decades my senior said
to me, then carried on as if I’d already agreed. She’d intercepted me as I entered the meadow that housed the protestor’s camp in Stone Holler on foot. The tents were pitched in orderly rows behind a cluster of screened rooms allotted to the tasks of food preparation and consumption. A row of four portable potties sat twenty yards behind the camp. If I hadn’t known better I might have thought I’d stumbled onto a Boy Scout jamboree site. Roxanne Chalmers was solidly built and of middle height with salt and pepper hair that was cut short for practicality. She was in shirtsleeves, as the warm morning dictated. I knew in an instant that she was responsible for the order in the campsite. I picked up a pail and trailed behind her, struggling to keep up with her brisk pace without breaking into a jog, though my legs were longer than hers.

  “You look like a reporter but walk like a cop,” she observed. “Which is it?” I couldn’t imagine that she saw either thing in me. I’m an even six feet with black hair, an average face and a Mediterranean complexion. I’m the kind of guy you forget ten seconds after you meet him. My walk had been painstakingly scrubbed of telltales years before.

  “Neither,” I replied as we threaded our way between blooming clumps of yellow foxglove and box huckleberry shrubs toward a stream that I’d seen from the road. Finding the holler proved to be more difficult than I’d anticipated. My phone-based GPS took me off Route 3, through a series of increasingly narrow, winding roads thrust between rolling mountains. The mountains in West Virginia look much like the Catskills, but wilder and closer together. “Hollers” were the local name for the valleys formed between the ridges of the Appalachian Plateau, but they were tricky to navigate. My GPS signal got weaker and weaker as the hills closed in and eventually gave up the ghost. I ended up navigating with a U.S. Geological Survey map of the county that I’d found in the package propped up against the wall just inside my motel room door when I returned from breakfast that morning. Eventually I found the camp. It consisted of a simple clearing of perhaps five or six acres pressed up between a mountain and a stream at the side of a dirt trail. Two police cruisers blocked the entrance. The cops let me pass after they decided I wasn’t a reporter.