Here’s a taste and tease of a sequel to Dirt, a new Claire Atkinson novel.
In Severality
. . . and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens, whether said Indian has been or not, by birth or otherwise, a member of any tribe of Indians within the territorial limits of the United States without in any manner affecting the right of any such Indian to tribal or other property.
“Dawes Act” 1886, Section 6
Chapter 1
Maneuvering the Detroit Dinosaur to back into her single-car garage, Claire Atkinson must torque her torso to look back over the seat, the long expanse of trunk, through the finned fenders and, beyond them, the washer/dryer. It hurts to do so. Even though several months have passed since her accident that was no accident down south, she feels the places that are slow to heal each time she finds herself in an awkward position. And Claire is prone to awkward positions and rare conditions.
Since closing that case, and completing testimony in the trials that followed, she has had little work, but that is how she likes it. Close a case, take your time to write it up, and, as if by cue, her phone rings. Glancing down, she sees it is her editor, Penelope Paddington, a name Claire wishes she had made up herself, although no one would believe a character could carry it.
Throwing The Tank into park, she picks up, wondering if her neighbors in Bridlemile—an older section of the larger suburb of Beaverton—on her cul-de-sac are watching and laughing at her car sticking half-in, half-out of the tiny garage, better suited to scooter than antique Cadillac. Mrs. Thompson next door is, no doubt, revising her story about Claire, the retired accountant and therefore full-time gossip responsible for twice as much fiction as Claire, herself, who actually gets paid for her mystery novels. She thumbs on her phone to see if that is actually still the case.
Before she can speak, Penelope says, “It’s a go.”
Although it has always been a go, once Claire broke into the publishing business by writing about people who victimize businesses and do bodily harm to others, but she had doubts about her current book, since it is set on a farm in a small community 50 minutes south, and therefore not usually of note or interest for New York publishing houses, or anyone else on the east coast for that matter. Just the reason Claire lives where she does. But, her books sell, and she learned early on it is all about numbers, not merit. “Well, good. Thanks for the heads up. Publication date?”
“Not yet. I’ll text when it is clear, but I want you to think about the cover’s blurbs. Who should I ask?”
“I’ll get back to you on that, but can’t we just reuse those from the last novel? Everyone does it.”
“Tacky. You know a ton of writers and reviewers that other people know of, so . . .”
“We’re not going to have another discussion, like we did with the last rodeo, are we?”
There is a long silence on the other end before her long-time editor speaks. “Things change, Claire. The industry . . .”
“Fuck the industry. A cluster of hedge fund fuck ups. You’re a professional, Penny. I trust your judgment in all things. You run interference on this marketing shit and say I ordered it. I’m not going to go into their author convent and do all the leg work it takes to sell the goddamned things. I write, you sell. We had a deal.” She can feel her prickle on the far coast, so she softens. “I’m sorry. It’s just that all I want to do is tend my garden, just some quiet time.”
“You haven’t healed completely, have you? Is there pain?”
Why do you do this? Claire asks herself. Why snap at those who have your best interests at heart? A few years ago, she found herself in a shootout with two right-wing militia members turned arsonists, while a wildfire bore down on them in the mountains. She got one, winged the other, but in the process took a round in the side. Somehow, and she still does not remember exactly how, she got down the mountain and stumbled into a firefighting crew on its way up. They called in a medevac and she woke in the Oregon Health & Science University’s trauma ward, a young nurse leaning over her, smiling. Behind her, Penelope. She remained a week, and talked her press bosses into paying Claire’s way to New York to stay with her for another. So, Penny has shown her concern on more than one occasion, including the last “accident.”
“I’m sorry Pen. Yeah. It hurts. But not all the time. I love you. I’ll get a list of names to you tomorrow, or else I can make initial contact, if you want.”
“Thanks Hon, that would be nice, now go plow the south 40 and do your farmer thing.” She hangs up, and as she pulls the gearshift down into reverse, she sees Mrs. Thompson walk by to her mailbox, waving. Claire waves back. The mail won’t come for an hour.
Standing to dust the dirt from the knees of her jeans, Claire takes a victory lap for her plantings. For the first time in years, she’s made her schedule and can now slow down until the next wave of veggies needs to find the dirt. She loves to garden. Doesn’t matter what, vegetables, flowers, fruit trees. The simple fact of life rising in all its forms and shapes and sizes, pulled to the sun from the grave. In college she was a great fan of Theodore Roethke, another Northwest resident whose poem collection Cuttings changed the ways she saw things, particularly growth and resilience, the urge of all things toward life. Like Virginia Wolfe’s “The Death of a Moth,” it was an epiphany. She pulls off her gloves.
As she’s putting away the tools in the shed behind the garage, her phone rings again. Fumbling it from her jeans, she says, “Hello Bob. What’s up?”
Robert Kim is an attorney with a practice in downtown Portland who, Claire claims, specializes in lost causes. Bob’s environmental causes and social justice cases he’s taken up over the years have benefited from Claire’s assistance as his primary investigator. And he’s won almost all of them. She enjoys the work he brings her, although it does not keep her away from life threatening situations, such as a crazy hitman who used a pickup truck as a weapon. But, it is just more grist for her literary mill, so she always takes his calls.
“I don’t know. You tell me. I see you called me.”
She laughs. “Sorry. Butt dial. I’ve been working in the garden this morning.”
“How are you feeling lady? All healed?” She explains her state, briefly. “So you’re not a hundred percent?”
“Close enough. Got a job?”
“I didn’t, until we started talking.”
And it is this way with Bob. Random connections and sudden impulses. He’s more of an organizer than litigator. He knows his way around a courtroom—as many a high-priced lawyer has learned—but it’s as a manager that he shines. Seeing angles and hidden agendas others miss, and always ready when barriers drop and opportunity knocks. “I’m thinking you need a road trip, to slip back into the life.”
Oh, oh, she thinks. With gas prices what they are? “Who’s driving and how far?”
He laughs. “You kept The Tank?”
“In the garage, purring.” During their most recent case, Claire’s new car became the target of a man ordered to shake her off his boss’s trail, and hence the car crash, for which Claire was cited for DUI by a corrupt sheriff’s department. The man was nowhere to be found when deputies arrived. Bob got the charges dropped, but their client, Abel, had suggested she think big when she replaced the demolished compact, for her own safety.
“We have a deposition coming up on the coast. Melanie is handling it, but I’m beginning to think having you there would be a good idea. Another set of eyes and ears, and someone who can follow up on anything that pops up during the questioning. Interested?”
“The usual deal?” To date, she’s worked on continency, that if money arises from a case, she gets her cut. In the worst case scenario, she walked away with material, if not cash.
“This time, I can front your expenses. Room, travel, etc. And then the usual.”
“Is it a winnable case?”
“Actually, we’re defending a guy who’s facing financial ruin due to a wrongful death civil suit.”
Just the type of stuff Claire does not enjoy. A civil case that has little chance of becoming a novel. “I don’t know. Send me a file?”
“This afternoon. It’d be nice to work with you again Claire, and this guy’s getting the royal shaft.”
As usual, the downtrodden, she thinks. “When is the deposition?”
“Day after tomorrow. Newport.”
“I’ll let you know in the morning. I like Melanie. It might be a fun road trip with her. You covering the bar tabs?”
“I’ll alert the bail bonds.” He signs off, and, thinking here we go again, she goes in the house to begin pulling things together, her go bag, toothbrush, change of underwear . . .
“How can you not own a car?” Claire asks as Melanie plops her bag on the huge backseat and climbs in the front.
“I never needed one.”
“Even in high school?”
“I grew up in New York. You know what parking, alone, goes for? We took the subway. Uber. Now, drive.”
She pulls out into traffic and heads toward the freeway. Actually, Claire is OK taking her car. Bob had said travels expenses, so . . . at $10 a mile.
The weather has turned nice again, after a day of rain Claire thanked for watering her new plantings. The sun burns off the morning mist on the fields as they drive southwest down 99 West. Traffic is light after they clear Newberg, and then McMinnville, so she pulls over to lower the top on the ’64 DeVille, hoping it’s not another of those days when the Valley is hot and dry and the coast is socked in with fog and thirty degrees cooler.
Melanie watches her closely as she lowers and stows the top. “A lot of trouble, a car.”
“Don’t get smug. In my line of work, it’s an invaluable tool. And, at times like this, a retro joy.” She climbs back in and pulls out on the road, relishing the acceleration, as she demonstrates for Melanie the post-war philosophy of bigger, better. The car rides as smoothly as a cloud, its massive weight holding it to the earth in a loving embrace, even when the road turns curvy.
They stop for lunch in Lincoln City, and continue, with Claire wishing she could pull over and nap. She has enjoyed her after-lunch naps during her recuperation, so this call to duty is not as charming as she had hoped or imagined. At Depoe Bay, she pulls into a parking space on the highway overlooking the Pacific and climbs out. “You want coffee?”
It takes Melanie a moment to answer, seemingly lost in the view. “No. Thanks. Wow. This is . . .”
“Yes, it is.” She goes to the coffee shop on the corner and orders, watching her passenger grow serene.
Touted as the world’s smallest navigable harbor, where private fishing, and charter boats moor, the small fishing and tourist town’s main street is Highway 101, running from Canada to Mexico along the Pacific coastline. As she scans the horizon, she sees three small boats motoring toward her position, aiming for the narrow entry to the bay, cut through a solid rock formation by the sea, over millions of years. She gets out to stand on the sidewalk over the small opening to watch them speed through it, riding long swells of current. Shaking her head and smiling, she walks slowly back to the car, hugging herself to keep warm.
Continuing south, the road turns into curves with an occasional passing lane, which Claire takes to get around a tour bus and semi, but as she puts on her turn signal and looks to the side mirror on the passenger door to return to the right lane, she sees Melanie staring at her, a look of panic etched on her face. “What are you doing?”
Snapping out of it, Claire sees she is doing 90 mph, and climbing. Thankfully, the curves on Cape Foulweather are long and sweeping affairs, so she slows and slides over to the slow lane. “Whew. Sorry. I keep forgetting what The Beast can do. When you’re floating along, it doesn’t seem so fast.” She can tell her passenger is less than convinced.
“I thought someone was chasing us!” And Melanie laughs.
As Melanie checks in at the hotel, Claire goes into the lounge to check the menu for a snack. Pulling up at the bar, she orders a gin martini, and reads.
“We might as well eat here tonight,” Melanie says climbing the stool next to her.
“Want a drink?”
“Yes, but I have work to do, to prepare.”
“I’ve glanced through the file that Bob sent. There sure doesn’t seem to be much.”
“Less than . . .” She reconsiders, then orders a white wine. “We don’t understand how this case even made it this far.”
Claire thinks back through it. The plaintiff is a widow, who claims the defendant, a fisherman named Clay something, had allowed her husband to die. How he was to have done this, neither Bob nor Melanie can discern, hence the deposition, although their client will be the first deposed. By all accounts, a few years ago the deceased was fishing, alone, on a commercial vessel that, simply, sank. No witnesses. No evidence of foul play or malfeasance. An accident. Her husband was found drowned, with major burns on his body the result of his engine exploding, the corpse entangled in ropes from his boat. But Claire knows from experience that there are accidents, and then there are accidents. Even so, she cannot read between the lines here.
“It says, in the file, that this Clay and friends were actually searching for the victim. Terry wasn’t it?” she asks.
“Yes. Terry. They were. But the Coast Guard found him, finally, after the fog cleared. But it was too late, and the Guard’s own files on the search are, well, sketchy, too. It was night, they were originally searching the wrong area, so there may be some conscious omission.”
“So, the wife, she’s hoping that this Clay will settle, out of court. Does he have insurance, a company that would fold rather than take it to a jury?”
“None. Married, two kids, twins. The hand-to-mouth life of a fisherman. I’ve been reading up on it. I have a novel in my room that gives you a good idea of the life here. You can borrow.”
Oh joy, Claire thinks. Just what a novelist wants to do, read someone else’s novel. “Sure.”
“It’s not in the file you have, but there are complications. The death sparked a shitstorm, here, and in the state in general. Political fallout, criminal cases, all about some attempt for organized crime to infiltrate the industry, run drugs, launder money.”
“That was this?” Claire vaguely remembers months of newspaper articles and television news reports. “But what’s that got to do with your client?”
“That’s just it. We have no idea. He was never implicated, arrested or charged with anything. He doesn’t seem to have been a part of any conspiracy. If anything, he and his fishing buddies were all victims. They even formed a co-op to try to stop the takeover.”
“No good intention goes unpunished, eh?”
“Evidently, that may be the case in a nutshell.”
Claire tips her drink, eats the olive. “Should be an easy job. I sit in on the deposition, and have another nice drive home.” Melanie looks less than confident this will be the case. “Besides, it sounds like there is a long list of people who may have wanted this guy dead. Why pick on your client?”
Melanie just shrugs as she sips her wine.
When Clayton Nelson exits the county courthouse, Claire is waiting, leaning against the fender of her car and watching a bank of low clouds roll ashore from the Pacific. Other than that intrusion, the day is still and warm and threatens another sun break after the clouds pass. She has put the top up on her car nonetheless.
“Well, that was a cluster fuck,” she says has he passes by on his way to an old beat-up pickup rusting in a slot down the lot. He stops, takes notice of her.
“You were there, with Melanie.”
She lets the obvious pass. “So, one question. Did you do it? Watch him drown and not take action?”
“Why not just skip the foreplay and get right to the point.”
She laughs. “I’ve found it is sometimes the simplest way to get to the truth. Saves a lot of legwork and frustration.”
“And no one ever lies, to get you off their backs?”
“Of course. Some even lie to get me on mine. The trick is to be able to tell.”
It is his turn to laugh. “You off the clock? Buy you a beer?”
She looks over at his truck, and sees a woman passenger she hadn’t noticed earlier. “Sure. Melanie, too?”
He gives her the name of a bar on the bayfront, and leaves, the woman waving as they exit the lot.
Once the four of them are seated and served, he leans over the table and says, “It’s complicated, the answer to your simple question.” Flirting with middle age, graying at the temples with a leathered face and crows’ feet, he has a ready smile, and hazel eyes that sparkle.
“Careful. This could turn into a sweeping philosophical conversation,” the woman, his wife Sharon, says.
Rather than continue, Clayton looks to Melanie. “So, where do we stand now?” Claire notes the diversion.
“In my estimation, they have failed to prove a prima facie case.”
“Meaning?” Sharon asks.
“That they have not provided ample evidence or argument to proceed.”
“That they’re blowing smoke out their asses,” Claire clarifies.
Clay takes a long drink, smiles. “In the meantime, they’re costing us good money just to say as much.”
“Ain’t our legal system grand? Sorry Mel.”
“No offense taken. Sometimes it gets used, just to intimate, browbeat.”
“By washed up, lame politicians.”
“Them, too,” Sharon agrees. “But what we can’t understand is why her? What’s in it for her?”
“To be determined, if you want to proceed,” Melanie replies. Their questioning looks call her to explain. “Look, the judge is going to toss this out. It’s over, if you want. Or, we can depose the wife tomorrow and try to get to the bottom of it. Your call.”
When they remain silent, Claire steps in. “It will cost a few more bucks, but may not work. It could open a can of worms. Or, and this is why we’re asking, it could perhaps tell you if someone’s gunning for you for some reason.”
“Who, for god’s sake? What’d we do?” Sharon asks.
The two of them just shrug. Then Claire asks, “What happened to your friend?” During the deposition, the plaintiff’s attorney contended that Clay allowed the victim to die—implying his failure to intervene may have been more covert than simply passive—because he blamed Terry for the death of Clay’s longtime friend. This is the first they’d heard of the theory, and no evidence was given to support it.
“Car accident,” he replies.
“All a part of the record. Case closed,” Sharon adds.
“When?” Claire asks.
There is some hesitation, but then Clay answers. “That summer. Weeks before Terry died. But how they connect those two events is bullshit. Terry’s death wasn’t retribution, revenge. It’s just how the universe works. Bad acts get bad results.”
“So it was karma?”
“Whatever.”
“This is all interesting, but it doesn’t answer the question: continue or not to continue,” Melanie says.
Sharon starts to say something, but catches herself and looks to Clay, who says it for her. “We’re too old for this shit.”
“Send us a bill. And thanks, you two, for coming down. We appreciate it,” she adds.
“Very much. Give Bob our best.” Getting up, he lays a twenty and ten on the table, and they leave.
“Well, that was easy. Sit on my butt and listen, then drive home.”
Melanie watches the pair get in their truck and drive off. “This is all very strange. There’s something we’re not hearing.”
“Indeed. What time should we leave in the morning?”
“I need to talk with the judge, file for dismissal, so 11:00?”
“Good. I want to visit the morgue first thing.”
When Melanie exits the courthouse the next morning, she finds Claire waiting in the lot in her car, top down, reading from a file.
“Your bag’s in the back. Checked out. You ready to party?” Claire asks.
Melanie gets in. “Sure.” Claire hands her the file.
“Some light reading for the trip. We’ll take the long way home, to give you time, but there’s one stop I’d like to make along the way.”