One Door Away From Heaven

Chapter 62

According to the inset chart of estimated driving times on the AAA map, Micky should have required eight hours and ten minutes to travel the 381 miles between Seattle and Nun’s Lake. Speed limits and rest stops were factored into this estimate, as were the conditions of the narrower state and county roads that she had to use after she exited Interstate 90 southeast of Coeur d’Alene.

After leaving Seattle promptly at 5:30 A.M., she reached her destination at 12:20 P.M., one hour and twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Light traffic, a disregard for speed limits, and a lack of interest in rest stops served her well.

Nun’s Lake proved to be true to its name. A large lake lay immediately south of it, and an imposing convent, built of native stone in the 1930s, stood on a high hill to the north. An order of Carmelite nuns occupied the convent, while fish of many denominations meditated in the deeps of the lake, bracketing the community between a monument to the power of the spirit and a flourishing recreational enterprise.

Evergreen forests embraced the town. Under a threatening sky, great pines sentineled the looming storm, orders upon orders of symbolic sisters in green wimples and guimpes and habits, needled garments so dark in this somber light that at a distance, they looked almost as black as the vestments of the real nuns in the convent.

Although the town had fewer than two thousand residents in the off season, a steady influx of fishermen, boaters, campers, hikers, and jet-ski enthusiasts doubled the population during the summer.

At a busy sportsman’s store that sold everything from earthworms by the pint to six-packs of beer, Micky learned that three facilities in the area provided campsites with power-and-water hookups to motor homes and travel trailers. Favoring tenters, the state park dedicated only twenty percent of its sites to campers requiring utilities. Two privately owned RV campgrounds were a better bet for those roughing it in style.

Within an hour, she visited all three places, inquiring whether the Jordan Banks family had checked in, certain that Maddoc would not be traveling under his real name. They were in residence at none of the campgrounds, nor did they have a reservation at one.

Because the stagnant economy had crimped some people’s vacation plans and because even in better times the area had a surplus of RV campsites, reservations weren’t always required, and space was likely to be available at all three facilities when Maddoc pulled into town.

She asked each of the registration clerks not to mention her inquiry to the Banks family when eventually they showed up. “I’m Jordan’s sister. He doesn’t know I’m here. I want to surprise him. It’s his birthday.”

If Maddoc had false ID supporting his Jordan Banks identity, he probably had identification in other names, as well. He might already be in one of these campgrounds, using a name that she didn’t know.

Leilani had described the motor home as a luxurious converted Prevost bus: “When people see it rolling along the highway, they get all excited ’cause they assume Godzilla is on vacation.” Furthermore, Micky had seen the midnight-blue Dodge Durango parked at the house trailer next door to Gen’s place, and she knew Maddoc towed it behind the Prevost. Consequently, if he was registered under a third name, she’d be able to find him anyway during a tour of the campgrounds.

The problem was that at each facility, she needed to know a registered guest in order to obtain a visitor’s pass. Until Maddoc either checked in under the Banks name or until she learned what other identity he might be using, she wasn’t able to undertake such a search.

She could have rented a site at each campground, which would have allowed her to come and go as she pleased. But she had no tent or other camping gear. While you could sleep in a van and pass as RV royalty, sleeping in a car branded you as hall a step up the social ladder from a homeless person, and you were not welcome.

Besides, her budget was so tight that if she plucked it, the resulting note would be heard only by dogs. If she connected with Maddoc here but was unable to find an opportunity to grab Leilani, she might have to follow them elsewhere. Because she didn’t know where this quest might lead, she needed to conserve every dollar.

Short of returning to all three campgrounds at one- or two-hour intervals, making a nuisance of herself, Micky could see only one course of action likely to lead her to Maddoc soon after he finally arrived in Nun’s Lake. He had come all this way to talk to a man who claimed to have experienced a close encounter with extraterrestrials. If she could run surveillance on that man’s home, she would spot her quarry when he paid a visit.

At the busy sportsman’s store where previously she had inquired about RV-friendly campgrounds, she’d also asked about the local UFO celebrity, eliciting a weary laugh from the clerk. The man’s name was Leonard Teelroy, and he lived on a farm three miles east of the town limits.

The directions proved easy to follow, and the narrow county road was well marked, but when she arrived at the Teelroy place, she found that it qualified as a farm only because of the work that had once been done there, not because it currently produced anything. Broken-down fences surrounded fields long ago gone to waist-high weeds.

The weathered barn had not been painted in decades. Wind and rain, rot and termites, and the power of neglect had stripped fully a third of the boards from the flanks of this building, as though it were a fallen behemoth from the ribs of which carrion eaters had torn away the meat. The swaybacked ridgeline of the roof suggested that it might collapse if so much as a blackbird came to rest upon it.

An ancient John Deere tractor, trademark corn-green paint faded to a silver-teal, lay on its side, entwined by rambling weeds along the oiled-dirt driveway that led to the house, as if in some distant age, the angry earth had rebelled at ceaseless cultivation and, loosing a sudden ravel of green brambles from its bosom, had snared the busy tractor, tipped it off its tires, and strangled the driver.

Micky had not originally intended to visit Teelroy, only to keep a watch on the house until Maddoc arrived. She drove past the farm, and immediately east of it, she saw that the north shoulder of the county road lay at the same elevation as surrounding land; she had her choice of several places where she could back the car among the trees to maintain surveillance from a relatively concealed position.

Before she could pick her spot, she began to worry that Maddoc might already have been here and gone. If she’d come after him, she would be maintaining surveillance while he and Sinsemilla headed out of Nun’s Lake with Leilani for points unknown, untraceable.

She’d chosen a route around Nevada, fearing that the government quarantine of the eastern portion of the state might widen to include the entire territory, trapping her within its boundaries. If Maddoc had taken the Nevada route and had encountered no roadblocks, he had traveled fewer miles to get here than she did.

Each day, she had driven long hours, surely much longer than Maddoc would have wanted to sit behind the wheel of a more-difficult-to-handle vehicle like the motor home. And she was confident that her Camaro had throughout the trip maintained a much higher average speed than his lumbering bus.

Nevertheless…

At first opportunity, she swung the car around and returned to the Teelroy farm. Entering the driveway, passing the rusting hulk of the overturned tractor, she slowed and took a closer look. She half expected to glimpse the sun-bleached bones of the bramble-strangled driver that she had previously imagined, because on second view the farm appeared to be an even grimmer place — and stranger — than it had been at first sight.

If Norman Bates, psycho of psychos, having escaped from the asylum and fearing that an immediate return to the motel business might make him easier for the police to find, decided to apply his knowledge of the hospitality industry to a simple bed-and-breakfast, this old house would have delighted him when he found it. Sun, rain, snow, and wind were the only painters these walls had seen in twenty years. Teelroy had done barely enough maintenance to spare himself from grisly death in a spontaneous structural implosion.

Between the Camaro and the porch steps, Micky crossed what remained of a front lawn: bare dirt and scraggly clumps of bunch-grass. The wooden steps popped and creaked. The porch floor groaned.

After knocking, she stepped back a few feet. By standing too close to the threshold, she seemed to be inviting a Jack the Ripper moment. The air could not have been stiller if the entire farm had been covered by a bell jar.

The bruised and swollen sky looked angry, as though momentarily it would take hard revenge on everything below it.

Micky didn’t hear anyone approaching the door, but abruptly it was yanked inward. Into the doorway hove a formidable bulk that smelled rather like sour milk, had a face as round and as red as a party balloon, and wore a beard so bristly that it looked less like hair than like tumbleweed. Bib overalls and a short-sleeve white T-shirt suggested this was a person standing before her, but the impression could be confirmed only by what she saw above a squash-shaped nose aglow and webbed with burst capillaries. Between that nose and a head as utterly hairless as a tomato, two fat-swaddled brown eyes confirmed his humanity, for they were filled nearly to overflowing with suspicion, misery, hope, and need.

“Mr. Teelroy?” she asked.

“Yes — who else? — nobody here but me.” From out of that bulk and beard and bad body odor had come a voice as sweet as a choirboy’s.

“You’re the Leonard Teelroy who had the close encounter?”

“What outfit are you from?” he asked pleasantly.

“Outfit?”

He looked her over from head to foot and back up again. “Real people don’t look as good as you, missy. You’re dressed down, tryin’ to hide it, but you’ve got Hollywood written all over you.”

“Hollywood? I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

He peered past her at the Camaro in the driveway. “The junk heap’s a nice touch.”

“It’s not a touch. It’s my car.”

“People like me are born to cars like that. Someone looks as actress-pretty as you — she’s horn with a Mercedes key in one hand.”

He wasn’t gruff or argumentative. But he had his opinions and, in spite of his dulcet tones, an attitude.

He seemed to be expecting someone else. Because he appeared to have mistaken her for that person, she tried to start over.

“Mr. Teelroy, I’ve just come to hear about your UFO experience and to ask—“

“Of course you’ve come to ask, because it’s one of the great stories ever. It’s a blockbuster, what happened to me. And I’m willin’ to give you everythin’ you need — after the deal is made.”

“Deal?”

“But I expect honesty from anyone I do business with. You should have driven up in your real Mercedes, wearin’ your real clothes, and straight out told me what studio or network you’re with. You haven’t even told me your own name.”

Now she understood. He believed his UFO experience would be the next Spielberg epic, with Mel Gibson in the Leonard Teelroy role.

She didn’t have any interest in his close encounter; however, she saw a way to use his misapprehension to get the information that she really needed. “You’re a shrewd man, Mr. Teelroy.”

He beamed and seemed to swell in response to this compliment. His unnaturally red complexion brightened further, as boilers always brighten in cartoons just prior to exploding. “I know what’s fair. That’s all I’m asking — just what’s fair for a story this big.”

“I can’t reach my boss on a Sunday. Tomorrow, I’ll call him at the studio, discuss the situation, and come back with an offer in an entirely professional manner.”

He nodded slowly twice, as a courtly gentleman might acknowledge agreement with a lady’s kind proposal. “I’d be gratified.”

“One question, Mr. Teelroy. Do we have competition?” When he raised one eyebrow, she said, “Has a representative from another studio been here already this morning?”

“No one’s been here till you.” Suddenly and visibly, he realized that he ought to leave her with the impression that enormous sums had already been dangled before him. “One fella visited yesterday”—he hesitated—“from one of the big studios.” Poor Leonard didn’t lie well; his boyish voice thickened with embarrassment at his boldness.

Even if someone had been here on Saturday, inquiring about the UFO, he couldn’t have been Maddoc. At most, the Prevost might have rolled into Nun’s Lake a few hours ahead of Micky.

“I won’t say which studio,” Teelroy added.

“I understand.”

“And not thirty minutes ago I had a call about all this. Man says he came here from California to see me, so I’m sure he’s one of you people.” The hesitancy and the thickness had gone out of his voice. This was no lie. “We have an appointment shortly.”

“Well, Mr. Teelroy, I’m sure you’ve heard of Paramount Pictures — haven’t you?”

“They’re big-time,”

“Way big-time. My name’s Janet Hitchcock — no relation — and I’m an executive with Paramount Pictures.”

If Maddoc proved to be the man with an appointment, she hoped to prevent Teelroy from mentioning her in such a way that the doom doctor would realize who’d been here before him. Now there would be no reference to a nameless “actress-pretty” woman in a dusty old Camaro. Teelroy would instead be eager to drop the name Janet Hitchcock of Paramount Pictures.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Hitchcock.”

He held out his hand, and she shook it before she had time to think about where it might have been recently. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow,” she lied. “We’ll set up a meeting for the afternoon.”

Although the man was a grotesque, though he was trying to work a scam, though he might be delusional, possibly dangerous, Micky regretted lying to him. He’d shed all suspicion, but his eyes still brimmed with misery and need. He was more pathetic than offensive.

The world held too many people who couldn’t wait to shoot the wounded. She didn’t want to be one of them.