Bad Things

We touched down a little after three o'clock. Driving up into the foothills of the Cascade Mountains took an hour, and then I turned north off 90 and through thirty miles of trees before reaching the outskirts of Black Ridge itself. It would be easy to imagine the town only has outskirts, on first meeting. Even if you know better, and where to find what counts as the main attractions, driving too fast will still have you out the other side before you know it.

Black Ridge is a place of small wooden houses on lots through which you can see the next street, and stands at an altitude of about three thousand feet. It stretches twenty disorganized blocks in one direction, twelve in the other, before blending back into the forest which climbs into the mountains toward the two major lakes of the area, Cle Elum and Kachess. There are off-kilter crossroads holding hardware and liquor stores, a few diners where no one's bothering to string up fishing nets or kidding themselves as to the quality of what's on offer, and a couple of car-hire places. Presumably to help people leave. The older part of town – an eighty-yard street at the western end, offers a short run of wooden-fronted buildings holding an antique/junk emporium, a coffee shop/second-hand bookstore, a burger place, a pizza place, a couple of bars, and not a great deal else.

As I'd driven up into the mountains I'd refined my plan. Finding a motel was the first step. I'd passed up a Super 7 and a couple of tired-looking B & Bs before suddenly finding myself confronted by a place I recognized. I'd known it would be there – I had lived in it for nearly a month – but it remained strange to see this particular motel still in business, looking the same as when everything had been very different. I didn't consider turning into the entrance.

On the road out the northwest side of town I found somewhere called Marie's Resort, an old-fashioned, single-storeyed motel that had cars parked outside all but three of its twelve rooms. It was clad in rust-red shingles and stood right up to the woods on all sides except the front. I vaguely recognized it from the old days and thought it would do.

Marie – assuming it was she – was a short, husky, sour-faced woman who looked like she'd seen most of what life in these parts had to offer and hadn't enjoyed much of it except the shouting. Her skin was the colour of old milk and the pale red hair piled on her head looked like it had last been washed in a previous life. Other than telling me the rate and asking how long I wanted to stay, she kept her own counsel throughout the entire transaction. I told her I'd be there one night, maybe two. From a back room I heard a television relaying an episode of Cops. The woman kept glancing back toward it, perhaps expecting to hear the voice of a friend or relative as they objected unconvincingly to being hauled away to jail. Finally she pulled a key out of a drawer and held it out to me, looking me in the eye for the first time.

She frowned, the movement sluggish.

‘I know you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just passing through.’

I moved the car to sit outside Room 9 and took my bag inside. It was cold. There was a pair of double beds, an unloved chair, a small side table and a prehistoric television, all standing on a carpet whose texture suggested it was cleaned – if ever – by rubbing it with a bar of soap. I didn't even check the bathroom, accessed via a stubby corridor at the back of the room, on the grounds that it would only depress me. Other than a badly framed list of the things occupants weren't allowed to do, the room offered little diversion and no incentive to remain in it. I scrolled through the call log on my phone and clicked CALL when I found the number I'd been sent via email the day before. It rang six times, and then went to answering service.

‘Hey, Ms Robertson,’ I said, with bland cheer. ‘It's John, from the Henderson Bookstore? Wanted to let you know that item you ordered has arrived. It's here waiting for you. You have a good day.’

I cut the connection, feeling absurd. For engaging in Hardy-Boys- level subterfuge to hide the nature of a call to the woman's cell phone. For being in Black Ridge in the first place. For being, period.

I left the motel. If you have no idea where you're supposed to be, movement is always the best policy.

For the next hour I walked the town. It had evidently rained hard in the morning, and it wouldn't be too long before the locals could start expecting the first snow. Black Ridge was never a place in which I'd killed much time. The town wasn't familiar and did not go out of its way to welcome me. Pickups trundled past down wet streets. People entered and left their houses. Teenage boys slouched along the sidewalks as if three-dimensional space itself was an imposition. The few realtor signs I saw in yards looked like they had been in residence for some time, and more businesses seemed to be folding than opening. From the outside, Black Ridge looked as if it was in the middle of a poorly motivated closing-down sale.

As soon as you raised your eyes above house level you saw the ranks of trees waiting only a few streets away, and the clouds thickening, coming down off the mountains to remind people who ran things around here. There are places where man has convincingly claimed the planet, making it feel little more than a support mechanism for our kind. Washington State is not one of them, and mountains everywhere have never given much thought to us. After nearly three years on the coast, it was nice to see them again.

My phone, meanwhile, did not ring.

I found myself glancing at the few women on the streets, wondering if any was the person I'd come to look for. It was impossible to tell, naturally. Usually strangers look like extras – background texture in your life. As soon as you start to look more closely, everyone looks like they might be someone in particular.

Eventually I found myself becalmed on Kelly Street, the only place that might cause a tourist to hang around for longer than it takes to fill up with gas or a burger. I bought a coffee and a sturdily homemade granola bar in a place called The Write Sisters, served by a cheerful girl with remarkably blue hair. I sat outside on a bench with it, sipping the coffee and watching the streets. Nowhere seemed to be doing much business except the Mountain View Tavern, which stood almost opposite. Even the bar's patrons seemed lacklustre, men and women breezing in and out with the stiff-legged gait of the mildly shit-faced, walking down slopes only they could see.

Black Ridge was, as it had always been, kind of a dump. Carol and I hardly ever came down here – getting our groceries from Roslyn or Sheffer (the closest communities to our house) or Cle Elum (bigger than Black Ridge, but still hardly the excitement capital of the world). Once in a while we'd saddle up and drive over the Snoqualmie Pass and thence to Seattle, about three hours away. There were a couple of other small towns en route – Snoqualmie Falls, Snohomish, Birch Crossing – which were just about worth the trip if you are open-minded about what constitutes a good time.

Black Ridge wasn't one of our places, which is among the reasons why, two and a half years ago, I'd wound up in a motel here for a while. I'd spent almost all of that time holed up in my room, not sober, or else out the back in a chair, overlooking the disused swimming pool – also not-sober. It was a condition that I'd specialized in at the time. This lay in the past, however, and so I had little patience with the people I saw drifting in and out of the Mountain View. I didn't know whether Ellen Robertson was the kind of woman who might find herself in bars of an afternoon, however, and so I vaguely kept an eye out anyhow.

Or so I told myself. The truth was I had no clue what to do, or where to go, and no idea of what she looked like. Until Ellen called me, I was just an idiot sitting on a bench. I stretched the Americano as long as I could but as the light began to change it started to get cold and finally I stood up.

As I did so I noticed a young woman walking down the other side of the street, tall with dark hair and bundled into a black coat, the effect overall being somewhat like a lanky crow. She walked straight into the Tavern without hesitating, revealing a flash of pale cheek and forehead as she reached out for the door.

Was that Ellen? No, probably not.

Just after she'd disappeared, I heard a shout from behind and turned to see a large man bearing down on me. I froze for a moment, wondering what was about to happen next.

‘For the love of God!’ the guy said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Well, that's a sort of a greeting, I guess.’

‘Jesus H, John. It's been … You lost weight.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, as I braced myself to submit to one of Bill Raines's trademark hugs. Bill sure as hell hadn't lost any pounds. When I'd first met him he was big but rangy. There'd been an even larger guy waiting to get out, however, and Bill had usually done his best to help him. He'd always been this huge, affable guy, who used his surname to make dumb but disarming jokes about the weather in the Pacific Northwest.

We disengaged. ‘Well, shit on a brick,’ he said. ‘How the hell have you been?’

I shrugged.

‘Yeah. Carol with you?’

‘No. I'm really just passing through.’

We talked for a couple of minutes, establishing that Bill still lived out the north end of town, still worked at the family law firm down in Yakima, and was on his way to visit a client whose case he was affably confident of losing. I said I was living and working down in Oregon, without being more specific. I didn't proffer a reason for being here in town. I asked about his wife, because you do.

‘She's great,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Well, you know Jenny. Always got something on the boil. Look, shoot, I'm sorry, John – but I gotta run. Stupid fucking late as it is. You free this evening?’

‘Probably not,’ I said.

‘Shoot. That changes, give me a call. Jen's out of town. We'll get wasted like old times, man. It's been too long. It needs to happen.’

‘You got it,’ I said.

‘Well, okay then,’ he said. He seemed becalmed for a moment, then clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Shit, I really have to go. Later, yeah, maybe?’

‘Right.’

I watched him hustle across the street to his car, wave, and drive away. Then I walked back to the motel, climbed in my own vehicle, and got on with doing what had been in the back of my mind all afternoon, had perhaps even been the real reason I'd being willing to fly up here in the first place.

Maybe I'd never make contact with Ms Robertson, and probably it didn't matter anyhow. But there was one thing I could do, and it was about time.

Chapter 10 (#ulink_1cf8e800-9273-5fa6-abcd-caa931fb68fb)

When I was a hundred yards short of the gate I started to slow down, and eventually let the car roll to a halt. For the last ten minutes of the drive it had felt as if I was shaking, gently and invisibly at first – but growing in intensity until I had to grip the wheel hard to stay in control. As soon as the noise of the engine died away, I was still. When I was sure the shaking wasn't going to start again, I opened the door and got out.

I was now fifteen minutes northeast of Black Ridge. I'd taken the Sheffer road, climbing gradually higher, then turned off onto the country road which doubled back up into the mountains. A few miles from here it all but ran out, narrowing to a perennially muddy track under the aegis of the forestry management service. I walked up to the padlocked gate and stood looking over it, up the driveway.

Was this enough?

Over the last two years I had many times imagined being where I now stood, but in those morbid daydreams the gate had always been open and I had been there by prior arrangement. I had been possessed, too, of a keen sense of rightness, of a meaningful deed being undertaken. As is so often the case, life had failed to mirror fantasy.

I took out my phone. I knew the house number, assuming it had not been changed. Perhaps …

I turned at the sound of a car coming down the road, slowing as it approached. It was a spruce-looking SUV of the light and elegant type owned by people who have no genuine need for a rugged vehicle, but know their lifestyle requires accessorizing.

It stopped a few yards past me and the driver's side window whirred down to reveal a cheerful-looking man in his fifties.

‘Bob let you down?’

‘Excuse me?’