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Finn snorted. “If it hasn’t fell over,” he said. “Thing was close to rusting out back then.”
Delgado studied Finn a moment longer. Then he nodded and stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said.
* * *
—
Delgado found Evans Road easily enough. It was a left turn off Route 12F, just before the airport. There were very few houses; it was mostly scraggly trees, brush, and a couple of fields. He didn’t see any trailers, but he drove slowly down the road to the end, where it dumped out onto Route 180. He doubled back along Evans Road, going even slower. Finn had said “at the end of the runway,” so Delgado drove past a tiny old graveyard to a spot where he could see the airport through the trees. There was a rutted, half-overgrown dirt road, or driveway, and he turned down it. It led him toward the airport through trees that grew increasingly close to the rutted dirt road, and finally to a place where an old maple had fallen, blocking the way.
Delgado parked his car and got out. The tree blocking his way had clearly been there quite a while; it was already half rotted through. Even so, there was no way he could get his car past. He took a flashlight and a pair of work gloves from his car, carefully picked his way over the tree, and followed the old road on foot.
Another fifty yards and the road broke out into what had once been a clearing. It was mostly overgrown now—but at the far end, Delgado could see the wreckage of a double-wide trailer.
He pushed across the clearing through the encroaching scrub. Halfway through it, he hit a patch of thorns, some kind of bush. Delgado had no idea what it was, but the thorns tore his pants in two places, and his skin in three. He pulled on the work gloves and disentangled himself.
Moving more carefully now, Delgado worked around the thorns and closer to the trailer, and finally he was standing at the front steps. They were rotted through, of course. So was the trailer itself. It sagged in the middle as if some huge creature had been sitting on it. The front was intact, except for the windows, but the door hung on one hinge at a crazy angle.
Delgado walked slowly around the wrecked trailer. At one end, the encroaching brush was not quite as thick, and he crouched to look underneath. Shards of linoleum hung down where the floor had fallen through. There was a litter of rags, unidentifiable plastic items, and what looked to be half an old wooden chair. He stood up and completed his tour around the trailer.
At the far end, he paused again. The outer wall here had rotted through, and there was a large hole. Delgado worked over to it carefully, watching for any more of the vicious thorn bushes. He peered through the hole and inside the old trailer. The interior was dim, and he flipped on his flashlight and shone it around inside. There wasn’t much to see. The inside was as ruined as the outside. As far as he could tell, there was no furniture or anything else left in there. And with gaping holes in the floor in several places, it would be almost suicidal to try to get in and look.
Delgado stepped away from the trailer and worked around to the front again. He leaned in the front door and flicked the flashlight’s beam around. Nothing but ruined emptiness.
Delgado took a couple of steps back. For several minutes he stood there, not really looking at the trailer anymore. Birds chirped absentmindedly. A very small wind stirred the leaves around him. He didn’t notice. He just stood and thought. Then he turned and looked around the clearing. There was nothing to see but plant life. Delgado chewed his bottom lip for a moment and then nodded. He walked back to the spot at the end where he could see underneath and carefully pushed up close. Getting down on one knee, he stuck his head under and looked up. Above him, the floor was still mostly intact. It seemed an acceptable risk, and he crawled cautiously under the trailer.
At the first pile of rubbish he paused and sorted through it carefully. He found a piece of porcelain, half of a coffee cup. It was the kind of cheap souvenir mug you could buy at most tourist stops, and he examined it carefully. Very faintly, he could make out faded red letters: “RU,” and under that, “F.” Ruby Falls? It could be, if Riley really was from somewhere in the South. But it could just as easily say “RUGBY FOOTBALL.” Or “rubber fangs,” “ruined feet,” or a thousand other things. He put down the shard and crawled forward to the next heap of trash.
He sifted through the junk again, but the items he could identify were no better: The filthy, matted sleeve of a sweatshirt. Two broken plastic plates. A twisted metal fork. Rags, bottles, and rusted cans. Plenty of nothing.
But Delgado was a patient man, and he worked his way to the bottom of the pile. And finally, his patience was rewarded. Just underneath a mound of decomposing something mixed with shards of glass, a corner of something familiar stuck out, and Delgado felt his heart flutter. He carefully brushed away all the gunk on top and took the corner between gloved thumb and forefinger. It came free, and Delgado smiled.
A license plate.
It was old and battered and grimy, but it was intact. Since it had been on the bottom of the heap, the letters and numbers had not faded away completely. Delgado was amazed to note that his hands were trembling slightly as he tilted it to catch the light.
Green letters across the top spelled out “Georgia.” A faded peach made the O, and in the upper right corner a green sticker read “96”—the year this plate had been valid.
Even better, at the bottom was the word “PICKENS.” That would be the county of issue.
Delgado closed his eyes. For a moment he just breathed, listening to his heart race and then begin to slow down. He crouched there in a garbage heap under a moldering trailer, clutching a grubby old license plate and feeling something close to bliss. And then he opened his eyes, crawled back out from under the trailer, and walked down the road to his car.
He was still smiling as he drove away.
CHAPTER
13
Three weeks after the benefit dinner, Katrina was still thinking about Randall Miller. Not obsessively, not constantly, not even frequently.
But every so often, he would cross her mind, just the image of his warm smile and lovely white teeth and the feel of his strong but gentle grip on her arm. Katrina was hardly a giddy young girl, and she told herself she was being stupid to spend any thought at all on somebody she would probably never see again.
But the thought was there in her mind as she waited for her decorator, Irene Caldwell, to arrive for the day’s work. And that wait proved to be much longer than it should have been. Irene was scheduled to arrive at ten—but at 11:30 there was still no sign of her. She wasn’t answering her phone, either. That was very unlike Irene, a responsible and hardworking woman who was always punctual. At first irritated, Katrina began to grow alarmed at the thought that something might have happened to Irene—and the redecoration not even half done! She was just considering what she could do to find out when her phone rang. Glancing at the screen, she saw with some surprise that it was Tyler Gladstone, her attorney.
“Hello, Tyler, what a surprise,” she greeted him.
“And a slightly unpleasant surprise at that, I’m afraid,” he said. “Do I remember correctly that you are currently employing Irene Caldwell?”
Katrina’s stomach lurched. So something bad had happened. “Yes, I am,” she said. “What happened? Is she all right?”
