Sins of the Mother Page 6

  “Doubtful.” Gwendolyn handed him a photo printed from a security-camera feed. “I wasn’t able to get her name, but she looks familiar, particularly the eyes.”

  “Good lord.” His smile disappeared. “Why is she here?”

  “The sheriff brought her in to identify a body. Her name is—”

  “Caitlin Bergman,” Desmond said, the joy of the ceremony gone in an instant. “She’s Magda’s daughter.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  CAITLIN TOOK HER time in the hotel shower, even though a Larsen Timber SUV idled in the parking lot waiting for her. Cooler, she threw on fresh clothes, grabbed her bag, and slid into the SUV’s back seat, ready to let a local show her the sights.

  The driver didn’t speak much, other than to repeat what Dana the secretary had stressed over the phone: Anders Larsen couldn’t wait to talk about the State of Jefferson. From the comfort of the chilled back seat, Caitlin watched the roadside snake up and down through mountains of dense forest broken occasionally by huge stretches of bare hillside where logging had exposed the land like a man’s chest shaved for a surgery, naked and vulnerable. Every few miles, a side road would reveal a solitary home marked by an assortment of cars and their parts, all close to being absorbed by nature. More often a sign, or remnants of it, would advertise one of the many churches in the area. One in particular, a series of purple cards with yellow writing, caught her attention.

  The first read: Ever Wonder Why

  The second, five hundred feet later: You Are Here?

  The third: Ask Your Maker

  There was a fourth, something about Jesus, but she’d looked up past the last sign and watched the sun flicker through another stretch of fir and a lighter-colored tree, possibly hemlock, in a breathtaking mix of green and gold.

  As beautiful as it was, all she could imagine at the top of each hill was a tiny cluster of huts where ex–porn stars like her very own maker knitted sweaters.

  Stupid sign. It’s too late to ask her anything.

  After forty-five minutes of answerless nature, the SUV descended into a valley, crossed a rail line, and pulled into the parking lot of Larsen Timber, a massive three-story sheet-metal warehouse along a rail siding full of loaded flatcars.

  A durable-looking woman in her thirties wearing a flannel over beige Carhartt dungarees waited on the sidewalk with a smile, unfazed by the oppressive heat.

  “You must be Mrs. Bergman,” she said, opening Caitlin’s door. “I’m Dana.”

  Caitlin got out to the sound of a screeching saw blade. “The car wasn’t really necessary.”

  Dana bounced ahead for the door into the building. “Try telling Anders. Have you ever seen a working lumber mill?”

  “You’re fully staffed on a Saturday?”

  The woman laughed. “Well, I was at my son’s baseball game when the big man called—”

  “You didn’t leave on my behalf?”

  “Oh heavens, no. I love my son, but his dad can sit in this heat and still pretend to care. Anyway, last year’s fire season led to a thinning grant, and we’ve been working double shifts six days a week since January.”

  They passed through an air-conditioned reception area, stopping briefly to put on neon-green safety earmuffs, then opened a door to the busy mill floor.

  Dana shouted over the thrum of heavy equipment. “We do two-by-fours, one-by-fours, two-by-sixes—you name it. All sourced in state from responsibly managed forestland. Plus, the Chinese have been buying unfinished Doug fir as fast as we can pull it down.”

  “Impressive,” Caitlin yelled back, following the path marked by reflective tape on the concrete floor. At least thirty men worked the line, ranging from forklift operators to board planers. Caitlin didn’t know what any of the machines did, but they all looked modern and efficient. The whole place smelled of sawdust competing with industrial lubricant.

  They took a steel staircase up two stories, reentered the world of finished office space, hung their earmuffs on a rack of hooks, and stopped at an open doorway.

  “Anders,” Dana said, knocking on the metal frame. “Your reporter’s here.”

  She moved aside with a smile, and Caitlin went in.

  Anders Larsen’s white hair gave way to the ruddy complexion of a man who’d spent a life of seventy years outdoors, and rarely on a golf course. His faded green button-down shirt and khakis looked fresh from a late-nineties L.L.Bean catalog. The office furniture matched the man. Rugged, no frills.

  “Mrs. Bergman, so glad you could make it.”

  He leaned over his desk with his hand out and a smile that had never bought into the whole braces thing.

  She shook his hand firmly, noticing the calluses she’d anticipated. “Actually, it’s Miss.”

  He pointed to the chair. “Depending on how long you’ll be in town, we can take care of that. I’ve got a whole company of stud-making studs. Please, sit on down, Miss Bergman.”

  She took one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Call me Caitlin. I understand the company’s busy, but how come the boss is at work on a Saturday?”

  “No place I’d rather be. Now, I hear you’d like to talk about Jefferson.”

  Caitlin pulled her phone out and started her recorder. “And I understand you’re the man to talk to. This November, the people of California will consider the trisection of the state. How does the State of Jefferson come into the picture?”

  Larsen rocked back in his chair and brought his feet up, landing his boots on top of his desk. “The whole issue comes down to the bane of our founding fathers: taxation without representation …”

  Almost an hour later, the seventy-year-old still spoke with the enthusiasm of a college freshman majoring in political science. “… so we’re left with what we’ve got here—a government of the people, but only for some of the people.”

  A knock on the open door behind them broke his train of thought.

  “Aw hell, you’re busy.”

  Caitlin turned to see a taller, younger, and meaner-looking version of the man behind the desk standing in the doorway. Like Anders, he wore a rough-looking long-sleeved button-down. But unlike the boss, one sleeve had been rolled up to the bicep, revealing a mummy-like wrap of bandages starting at the wrist and ending somewhere inside the shirt. His eyes caught Caitlin’s, and for the briefest of seconds, she thought she saw a look of recognition.

  “Don’t stand there yammering,” Anders said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  Around fifty, the man shifted his eyes away. A fine mist of sawdust gave his brown hair a salt-and-pepper look. “I’ll come back.”

  “And waste my time twice? What’s so important?” Anders motioned the man into the room. “Caitlin, this is Johnny, my boy.”

  Johnny Larsen shot Caitlin a nod, but rather than reaching for a handshake, he moved behind his father’s desk and whispered. Caitlin made out something about “the BLM” and a town called “Powers.”

  Whatever he’d said made Anders just as angry as he had been happy to talk about statehood. “Bullshit. Did you tell them the whole point of starting now was to prevent a fire?”

  The younger Larsen leaned in again, whispered; then both men looked up at Caitlin.

  She had more than enough to work with but wanted a nice closing. “I’ve taken too much of your workday as it is, Anders. Let’s finish with one last question. What do you want the people of California to think about when they head to the polls this fall?”

  The son leaned back against the wall, one hand absently picking at his bandages, his eyes watching Caitlin’s every move.

  Anders sat up in his chair. “We’re not a bunch of fringe-element nutjobs shooting guns into the air. We’re business leaders trying to make the best possible situation out of the gifts we’re given. Unfortunately, the people making the rules live so far away they can’t see that our towns and people aren’t just losing the game—we don’t even get to play.”

  Caitlin stopped her phone and packed up
. “Thanks for your time—and the chauffeur.”

  Anders walked around the desk. “Of course. Unfortunately, the driver has to take me to my other mill. Johnny here can drive you back to your hotel.”

  Caitlin caught Johnny Larsen’s eyes and smiled.

  The man nodded but didn’t look happy about his assignment.

  “I’m in Coos Bay,” she said. “Hope that’s not a problem.”

  He beat her out the door. “I know where you’re staying.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  JOHNNY LARSEN’S TRUCK was no company SUV. The massive electric-blue F350 looked big enough to live in, but judging from the stickers on the midnight-tinted rear window, Caitlin wouldn’t be welcome. One for the State of Jefferson, one Confederate flag, and one she didn’t recognize but had a bad feeling about: The Proud Sons of Oregon. The high-gloss, decal-wrapped tailgate leaned more toward mainstream America: a belt-fed Browning M2 .50-caliber machine gun floated over the red-and-white stripes of freedom.

  She opened the passenger door and climbed into a cloud of cigarette smoke, all the more potent on a hot day. Caitlin had smoked for fifteen years, but nostalgia was the last feeling the scent conjured.

  Johnny had the beast moving before she managed to fasten her seat belt. If his bandaged right arm caused him pain, it wasn’t slowing him down any. He pulled out of the parking lot and gunned the accelerator, taking the twisting country road like he could drive it blindfolded.

  Caitlin kicked aside a plastic bag full of empty takeout containers and broke the ice. “I’d like to think you’ve got a really dirty tattoo under all those bandages.”

  The tiniest of smiles curled around his lit cigarette.

  “Just an accident.”

  “Not work related, I hope.”

  “Motorcycle.”

  “Yikes. So what’d you tell your father to set him off? Something about the BLM and Powers?”

  Johnny laughed. “Don’t miss much, do you?”

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaled, and glanced her way. “We’re supposed to start cable logging a ridge south of Powers on Monday, but the Bureau of Land Management just declared fire season conditions in the region, so we gotta modify our equipment layout. Honestly, it’s not a big deal, but the old man likes to pick a fight when he can. Makes him feel like he’s still the swinging dick in these parts.”

  He took another drag; then silence.

  A turn in the road sent the bag of takeout containers back toward Caitlin’s feet. She foot-tucked the bag closer to the center console, but Larsen reached over and grabbed the trash.

  “I got that.”

  On the bag’s way past, Caitlin caught the image of a man with an ax over the restaurant’s name. “The Lumberjack, huh? Any good?”

  Johnny shoved the bag behind his seat.

  “Good enough. Been in the family forever.” He brushed his hand off on his jeans. “Bergman. What kind of name is that?”

  That question had come up many times in her life, rarely without an all-too-obvious connotation.

  “I’ve been told it means mountain person in German.”

  He nodded, eyes back on the road. “Figured it was Jewish.”

  And there it was. “Used to be plenty of Jews in Germany, even in the mountains. What kind of name is Larsen? Swedish?”

  His eyes came her way again, but no smile this time. “Five generations, back to the beginning of Oregon. I’m very proud of my heritage.”

  Caitlin didn’t need any other hints to guess the meaning of Larsen’s Proud Sons of Oregon bumper sticker. They celebrated their proud white heritage. Nothing she liked more than forty-five minutes in the car with a white supremacist.

  “I’m adopted,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, heritage is just a word for the sins of the generation before me.”

  At least the mother, she thought, but didn’t say. This asshole didn’t need to know anything else about her life. She lowered her window an inch to let the smoke attack something besides her eyes.

  Johnny looked like he had more to say but reached for the radio, put on a country station.

  Caitlin grabbed her phone and sent Lakshmi a text.

  Want to make $30? Need interview transcribed. Tonight, if possible.

  Lakshmi replied with a thumbs-up emoji and a message:

  Send me the interview. I’ll start now.

  Five seconds later, the young woman called. Caitlin swiped the Can’t Talk Now message.

  Johnny turned down the radio. “Need to take that?”

  Caitlin pasted the voice recording of her interview into the text thread with the caption Will Explain Later. “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  They didn’t speak again until they reached the hotel’s parking lot.

  She grabbed her bag and started her polite good-bye, but Johnny interrupted. “You didn’t come all the way up to Coos County just to talk to the old man about Jefferson.”

  Caitlin’s hand lingered on the handle, but she didn’t get out. “Are you asking or telling?”

  Even in park, Larsen’s truck had the throaty growl of an animal ready to pounce.

  “Heard about a body they found on the road outside the federal land.”

  The sheriff hadn’t told Caitlin where her mother’s body had been found. For some reason, she’d assumed it’d been in the woods. That a white supremacist with a substantially bandaged arm knew more about her reason for being in town than she did made Caitlin sit up straight.

  “Heard from who?” she said, conscious of a surge of adrenaline.

  Johnny laughed. “I hear everything in this county, like how some reporter from LA flew in to ID the body. That’s gotta be you.” Johnny moved his tongue around his mouth like it was responsible for setting up his next sentence. “You one of those Dogs?”

  Johnny Larsen’s tone, like the medical examiner’s before him, said he had a serious ax to grind with the Daughters of God—or worse, a chainsaw.

  “You’re the second person around here to ask me that,” Caitlin said. “Who are these people?”

  He shook his head. “Bunch of wackjobs living in a compound in the high timber.”

  Caitlin forced a little chuckle. “What’s their thing? Crystals, moon circles, the power of light?”

  “Stealing little girls,” Larsen said, deadly serious. “Those lunatics took my thirteen-year-old daughter. Whoever killed that old bitch did the world a favor.”

  Caitlin’s inner journalist had competing questions ready to jump out. The rest of her wanted nothing more than to get into her hotel room and lock the door.

  “Sorry about your daughter,” she said, getting out. “Thanks for the ride.”

  She headed for the hotel lobby, painfully aware of the consistent rumble of the truck’s engine behind her, proof that Larsen hadn’t yet driven away. For a man who’d been hell-bent on setting a speed record from the lumber mill to the hotel, he wasn’t making any effort to get back on the road.

  She pushed through the lobby’s glass doors but froze when someone called, “Mrs. Bergman?”

  Caitlin turned to the employee behind the front desk, trying to hide the shudder that rolled down her spine. A young man with the remnants of active acne, he looked friendly enough in his blue vest. He couldn’t have known that he’d been the third person in as many hours to assume Caitlin was married because of her age. He also couldn’t have guessed how close he was to getting torn a new asshole.

  “What?” she said through clenched teeth.

  Even protected by three feet of solid counter, the kid took a step back. “Sorry, a cop came by earlier looking for you. He left you a package.”

  He stepped delicately back to his station, pulled a folder-sized package off a bottom shelf, and placed it on the counter top.

  Caitlin let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, found a smile, and took the sealed brown envelope. “Awesome, thanks.”

  She stepped into the hall to her room, then s
topped. The kid behind the desk wasn’t the woman who’d checked Caitlin in, which meant someone had described her well enough for her to be recognized. Probably Sheriff Martin, but still—Caitlin whipped back toward the front door. The counter kid had disappeared into a cubby, but through the doors she saw Johnny Larsen’s truck lingering in the parking lot, twenty feet from the curb. Was he lighting a cigarette, sending a text message, or was the man who heard about everything that happened in Coos County proving some kind of point? She tucked the package under her arm and walked back outside to see.

  Maybe it was her timing, maybe not, but the second her foot left the curb, the truck backed out and roared away into traffic.

  CHAPTER

  14

  JOHNNY CUT INTO traffic, already on his phone.

  “Are you kidding me? You really think some LA reporter gives a shit about Jefferson? Sounds like it’s time you retire, old man.”

  Maybe it was the car speaker, but Anders didn’t seem concerned. “Dana talked to her editor. She’s legitimate. I think she might really help the cause.”

  Johnny laughed. “The cause? She’s working with the Dogs. That bitch knows exactly where they’ve got Promise.”

  And those freaking eyes, he wanted to say. Caitlin Bergman’s got the same eyes as the one that jacked up my arm. But nobody needed to know how wrong that night on the hill had gone, especially not Anders.

  His father’s voice dropped into the low tone he used when he wanted to seem like a hard-ass. “John, you stay away from that woman.”

  Used to be that tone of voice meant a beating, sometimes worse. Now it didn’t mean shit.

  “Stay away?”

  “You hear me, son?”

  A stoplight turned red and Johnny slammed the brakes, stopping both his truck and the string of curses ready to come out. No point in getting kicked out of the will after taking all those punches.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up and rolled down the window. The air coming off the bay smelled fresh, despite the hot-as-balls breeze blowing into the truck’s cabin. What did Anders know about the cause? He’d spent Johnny’s whole childhood bitching about the coloreds and the Mexicans but had been hiring seasonal illegals for the past five years ’cause they’d work for half the pay of a white man. Anders cared more about being the richest man in never-gonna-happen-Jefferson than fighting to keep Oregon in the hands of Oregonians.