“The Batsto farm,” Krystal said. “I should have guessed. Steve’s a little obsessed with this place. A guy named Clyde Batsto lives here alone.”

  “Another Ordained of God?”

  “No, I told you, they’re all ancient. Batsto’s no older than you. Besides, he’s too much of a loner to be a member of anything. His parents might have been, though. They’re both dead.”

  “And buried, I hope,” I said, but not loud enough for Krystal to hear me.

  We parked next to the Explorer in a yard that already contained another four-wheel-drive truck—a Ford pickup—and a Sheriff’s Department cruiser. Beyond the vehicles was the farmhouse, which was white and larger than Prestina’s, though not as well kept. The roof had three different colors of shingles, and one end of the house had been stripped of its siding, revealing the insulation beneath. The siding might have been removed so the insulation could be added. If so, the project had been underway for some time. The plastic vapor barrier had come loose in spots, allowing pink fiberglass to poke through like runaway intestine.

  “Great,” Krystal said. “What a place to visit right after I’ve given my lecture on the simple dignity of rural Indiana.”

  Fallon told us to stay by the cars while he conferred with his “troops.” I took the order meekly enough, but the doctor bristled. As we watched, Fallon greeted two men, also in civilian clothes, though wearing guns. Fallon was wearing one now himself. After every few words of their conversation, he’d look back to see if we’d made a run for it.

  During one of these checks, Krystal surprised me by taking hold of my left arm. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, which had allowed her to spot a slight bump on the outside of my arm just above my wristwatch.

  “How did you break this bone?” she asked.

  Fallon looked around at us again and scowled.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

  “When did it happen?”

  Another glance from Fallon and another scowl.

  “About three years ago.”

  “Whoever set it should have his license revoked.” Fallon was no longer bothering to look away between scowls, and I realized that Krystal was holding my hand as well as my arm.

  “If you keep using me to make Mr. Fallon jealous,” I said, “you may get an opportunity to show off your own bone-setting technique. Or maybe just your stitching.”

  “I’ll be good,” Krystal said, dropping my hand. When Fallon crossed to us, she stepped out to head him off. “You may have gotten the wrong impression, Steve. Owen is an old friend of the family. I’ve known him since I was a kid.”

  “A little kid,” I added.

  “Sorry,” Fallon said, extending his hand to me. It was no bigger than Krystal’s, but a lot warmer. “I’m in a piss-poor mood this morning, as the locals say. I thought we were going to make some progress finally. Instead we seem to have stumbled into something out of Rod Serling. Did Krystal tell you what we’re after in Rapture?”

  “No,” I said. “She was leaving that to Deputy Dix.”

  Fallon scowled again. “Deputy Aw Shucks? Somebody would have to explain it to him first. To nutshell it for you, my agency has reason to believe that the area around Rapture is being used as one of the Midwestern distribution hubs for drugs coming up from Mexico.”

  “I keep telling him that there aren’t enough people around here to support a decent grocery store, never mind a drug empire,” Krystal said.

  “And I keep telling her that the bad guys aren’t selling the drugs around here, that they’re very careful not to sell the drugs around here. They’re receiving the bulk shipments, breaking them down, and sending them out to cities around the Midwest. There are operations like this all over the country, intentionally kept small and redundant to spread the risk. The ideal locations are thinly populated and remote, but with access to the interstate highway system. Rapture has that, thanks to Highway 50, which, not coincidentally, is just beyond the field on the other side of that barn.

  “The proximity of this farm to the highway is what attracted me to Batsto in the first place. That and his arrest record.”

  “Steve means Batsto drinks.”

  “I mean that Batsto’s been arrested for driving under the influence. The arresting officer found a bag of marijuana in his possession.”

  “A small bag,” Krystal said.

  Following their conversation was giving me a sore neck. To rest it, I asked Fallon, “How does the highway running past the farm figure in this?”

  “It eliminates the need for a courier truck to ever come into a town or even to stop. Nothing would be easier than tipping a bundle off a moving truck if your target is seventy acres across. We figured Batsto would wait on the appointed nights and bring the stuff back here. We’ve had the highway under surveillance and we’ve raided the farm. No luck.”

  “No sense,” Krystal said. “Ask him how Batsto intended to ship the repackaged drugs, Owen. He doesn’t know.”

  I declined the opportunity to step between them, thinking at the same time that they sounded married already and then some.

  “I know that it’s nearly harvest time,” Fallon said. “Batsto is close to moving truckloads of corn out of this place. And our information is that a big drug shipment is due any time.”

  “His anonymous tip, he means,” Krystal said. “Batsto will be lucky to get one truckload of corn out of this worn-out farm. And he won’t be shipping that farther than the nearest grain elevator.”

  “Batsto has acted suspiciously from the start,” Fallon countered.

  “That’s because you can’t keep yourself from looking down on him,” Krystal fired back. “And treating him like a dangerous redneck. All he’s guilty of is boozing and orneriness.”

  “And dematerializing,” Fallon said. “Come inside.”

  We walked past Fallon’s men, two more city boys, like their boss. They smiled at Krystal and scowled, loyally, at me.

  Fallon was explaining as we walked. “I decided to change tactics on Mr. Batsto. Instead of rolling him up, I thought I might persuade him to work with us.”

  “To turn informant?” I asked.

  “Yes. He knows what’s going on around here, I’m sure of that. He’s in on it or he knows who is. Even if Batsto’s involved, he’s not really a keeper. This kind of pissant operation is designed to be expendable, as I said before. But if I could get him to work with us, to help us backtrack toward the starting point of the distribution system, we could do some serious damage. We might put a dozen or more Batstos out of business.”

  He held the screen door of the farmhouse open for Krystal. I caught it before it shut behind them.

  “So I stopped by unannounced this morning,” Fallon continued.

  “With a couple of bodyguards,” Krystal said, nodding back toward the men in the yard.

  “Actually, I came alone. When I found what I found, I called in backup, including the local representative of law and order.”

  That ironic afterthought was directed to a man waiting inside the house. I awarded myself no points for deducing that he was Deputy Dix, as he was wearing a uniform, unfashionable polyester in seventies tones of beige and brown. From that starting point, it was easy to fall into thinking of him as the stylish Fallon’s mirror opposite, the DEA man’s country counterpart. The two men were about the same height and appeared to be the same age, but Dix still wore his sandy hair in an early John Denver bowl cut, and he was sporting a gut that Fallon would have starved himself to erase. His face was square-jawed, with an artificially flattened nose and small, distrustful eyes. The deputy’s complexion was as ruddy as Emmett Haas’s, but I’d have to wait to find out if that was his natural coloring or a reaction to Fallon’s condescension.

  “No sign of Batsto anywhere on the farm,” the deputy told Fallon, who nodded. “No sign of any drugs, either,” he added, getting no nod.

  Fallon had turned back to Krystal and me. He removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes that were nearly as dark. “I knocked, of course, but I didn’t get an answer. The door was unlocked, so I came in.”

  Dix stirred, and Fallon addressed his unspoken objection. “I felt justified in verifying Batsto’s health and well-being, given his potential value to our investigation. I identified myself as soon as I crossed the threshold, but no one answered me. Then I heard water running upstairs.”

  “So you went outside to wait politely in your truck,” Krystal suggested.

  “No,” Fallon said, flashing her a guilty grin. “I didn’t. But I didn’t go upstairs to kick down the bathroom door, either. I waited right here, soaking up the atmosphere.”

  He gestured to the room’s worn furniture, whose dark upholstery had a greasy sheen, to the water-stained wallpaper, or maybe just to the general aura. I was seriously missing Prestina Shipe’s potpourri.

  “I waited,” Fallon said. “And I waited. Half an hour went by, and the water was still running. I decided something wasn’t right, so I went upstairs.”

  He acted it out, stepping over to a staircase that ran up one wall of the room. We followed him, Dix bringing up the rear and sniffling steadily.

  At the top of the stairs was a small room containing a single narrow bed. It was light and airy compared with the first floor of the house. Fallon and Krystal bypassed it, but I went in, attracted by the movement of something yellow suspended from the ceiling. It was a model airplane, an old-fashioned one made of balsa wood and paper. It was hanging over the bed, turning slowly in a breeze that passed between open windows.

  Behind me in the doorway, Deputy Dix was blowing his almost nose. “The bathroom’s this way,” he said.

  The bathroom turned out to be bigger than the bedroom that had distracted me. Its floor and the lower half of its walls were tiled in tiny octagons. They were grayish white, except for a patch near the tub’s faucet, which must have been the location of an emergency repair. The tiles there were pink, and they looked like the scar of an old wound. The tub beneath the wound had claw-and-ball feet, but it was fitted with a modern showerhead—the kind that dispenses massages—and a trendy curtain, on which the logo of the Indianapolis Colts was repeated over and over.

  “This is how I found the room,” Fallon said, turning on the shower and pulling the curtain closed to give us the full effect. “I called to Batsto from the doorway, and identified myself for the fortieth time. No answer. I could see his things scattered about, but something told me he wasn’t here himself.

  “I was fed up by then anyway. I came in and yanked open the curtain.” He demonstrated, reaching out for the shiny plastic without taking his eyes from us.

  Emmett Haas had complimented me that morning on my ability to get into a story. He would have been proud of the way I did my part now, looking into the empty shower and feeling Fallon’s own surprise and confusion.

  “All I found,” the agent said, “was a piece of soap dissolving on the drain.” He pointed down to that small bit of physical evidence. “The only thing I could think of was that story you’d told me, Krystal. The one about Ms. Shipe and the rapture.”

  He thought of it again and smiled. I could feel Krystal stiffen beside me. Fallon went on without noticing.

  “Think of getting all lathered up and then—pow—you’re standing in front of the Almighty. That had to be a shock for old Batsto.”

  The feeling had surely been mutual, I thought as Dix held up Batsto’s pajama bottoms. They were wider than Fallon’s grin.

  “What happened to Prestina is no joke,” Krystal said coldly. “Neither are the Ordained.” She turned on her heel and marched out.

  I lingered as Dix said, “Batsto heard you coming and ran is all.”

  Fallon shook his sleek head. “Nobody hears me coming if I don’t want him to. I’m thinking Batsto was tipped off.”

  The two men stared at each other for a long time. Then, without any apparent signal, they turned their heads in concert and stared at me.

  “I’ll just wait out front,” I said.

  Chapter Seven

  I’d told Fallon and Dix I’d wait out front, but once downstairs I wandered toward the back of the house. I passed through Batsto’s kitchen but didn’t linger there. The sink full of unwashed dishes and the overflowing garbage can reminded me of my own kitchen and how I’d left it. For the first time since I’d crossed the state line the day before, I put New Jersey behind me with a mental wave and an unspoken promise to be back soon.

  Not that I was thinking, as I should have been, of Krystal’s mystery. I passed out through the back door of the farmhouse, noted with mild surprise that Batsto had built himself a sun deck, and then descended into the backyard, drinking in what was now early afternoon.

  The day had turned into a beauty, the kind of late summer, early fall day when the full sun, beaming down from a deep blue sky, feels no warmer across your shoulders than a friend’s arm. I would have followed Krystal’s example and turned my face to the sun, but that would have cost me the view. To my right was Batsto’s red barn, better maintained than his house, its open doorway patrolled by cousins of Prestina Shipe’s cats. Beyond the barn was a corner of a cornfield and beyond that was a line of trees, perhaps marking the edge of Highway 50. If so, the green wall also cut off the road’s noise. All I could hear was the buzzing of the insects who were happily chewing away on Batsto’s corn. To my left, the forest was much closer. I could see fat brown squirrels moving about in it, and, high on a dead branch, a hawk with a speckled breast, who alternately watched the squirrels and me. I wondered if Clyde Batsto was in the forest somewhere, watching me, too. The question couldn’t hold my interest.

  My mind went back instead to the Ordained. The afternoon reminded me of the climax of Emmett Haas’s story. The October day of the Great Disappointment had surely been very like this September one, just a touch cooler, probably. There would have been more color in the trees, as well. Only a few of the ones before me had even begun to turn. I imagined the trees around Rapture Meadow as a riot of yellows and reds. It had been harvest time, after all, the most natural time of the year for a community of farmers to expect an accounting.

  From that vivid picture of the day when the world didn’t end, I moved to imagining its anniversaries, the long line of October afternoons on which the original Ordained and then their descendants had reenacted what Haas had called the “Great Banquet.” It was a strange event to celebrate, on the order of my returning to St. Aelred Seminary every year for homecoming.

  St. Aelred’s hadn’t seemed so close to me since the evening I’d left it. It was close physically, of course, less than fifty miles away, but it felt much nearer than that, as near as the line of trees that marked the highway. If the school had really been there, just beyond the field of brown stalks, would I have crossed to see it? That morning, my answer would have been no. Now I stood and wondered.

  I was still wondering when Krystal found me. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Thinking about what’s beyond the corn.”

  “Highway 50,” she sighed. “Steve’s really fixated on that road.”

  “And on you,” I said.

  That cheered her up. She laughed as loud as she had at the idea of Owen Keane, mobster. “We’d make a great pair, wouldn’t we? The drug agent and the daughter of the man who used to grow pot in his lower forty. What a crazy life it is, Owen. You think you’re headed somewhere and then you end up back where you started, like a person lost in a snowstorm who walks in a big circle because one of his legs is shorter than the other. We’ve all got one short leg, that’s our problem.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I looked at my watch, and she said, “Time to go visit Brother Dennis?”

  “If I go at all. I could do that tomorrow if you’d like me to stay.”

  “How close are you to an answer?”

  “I haven’t figured out the question yet.”

  “Do you think the two disappearances are related?”

  “I don’t see how they could be. Unless you’re right about the rapture.”

  “Don’t you start teasing me, Owen. It’s easy to scoff at a belief. I should know, I’ve done it often enough. Cheap and easy. Back in Bloomington, I would have laughed as loud as anyone at the silly Ordained. It’s just that now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  “Nothing. Go and see the pottery. Maybe something will come to you on the drive. Come by as early tomorrow as you like. You’re welcome to stay with me tonight if you can’t find a bed in Oldenburg.”

  She raised her voice when she made that offer, the hairs on the back of my neck going up at the same time. I knew without looking that Agent Fallon had walked up behind me.

  “You’re not going to get me on that one twice,” he said.

  Krystal smiled her curly smile, and I relaxed again. “Sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Fallon said. “I was making fun of myself and my efforts just now, not the Ordained. I certainly wasn’t making fun of Ms. Shipe’s disappearance. In fact, if you’d like, my men and I can help you look for her this afternoon. We should be searching these woods for Batsto, but there’s no reason we can’t search in the direction of her farm.”

  “I’d really appreciate that, Steve,” Krystal said.

  It was a nice little reconciliation scene, but there was one character too many on stage. I cleared my throat and asked Fallon a question. “What kind of drugs is being smuggled through this area?”

  “Methamphetamine,” he said. “Familiar with it?”

  “It’s called crank, isn’t it?”

  “Or meth or speed,” Fallon said.

  “It’s mostly used out West, I thought.”

  “That’s where the problem is biggest, but it’s spreading east. Meth is already figuring in a significant number of emergency room cases in St. Louis, which is only six hours west of this very farm.”

  “Methamphetamine has been around for a long time,” Krystal said. “They think Hitler used it.”

  “And JFK,” Fallon said. “It gives a high energy rush that’s very popular with movers and shakers. You might say the times have caught up with the drug. Unfortunately, meth users develop a tolerance. Then they develop depression, insomnia, and paranoia. Modern problems for a modern world.”

 

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