She did not look up as he approached. “Mind if I join you?” He straddled the opposite end of the seesaw, bouncing Christina a foot or two into the air. “How are you?”
She shrugged, just barely.
“Nice weather, don’t you think? It was a little smoky in town after the fire, but that seems to have passed.”
He leaned back on the seesaw, propelling her even higher into the air, thinking that might compel a response. It didn’t.
“Al’s been caught,” Ben said. “He’ll stand trial for arson, maybe attempted murder. I was thinking I might represent him. I mean, we know he did it, but given the circumstances-” He started again. “They’ve also got Slade’s hoods, including the one who ran down Doc, but Slade himself disappeared shortly after he was airlifted out of the forest. Half the state and federal law enforcement community is looking for him, but so far, no luck. I hope they’ll catch him-but I have my doubts. He’s a pretty slippery creep, used to taking care of himself.”
He sighed. Her silence was cutting, rending the air between them like the swath of a scythe.
“I’m just so relieved,” Ben said, continuing his babbling soliloquy. “I was so worried-so afraid that maybe, just maybe Zak was the murderer. Maybe he’d been a killer all along and it was my fault he was released the first time so he could kill again. I can’t tell you what a weight this lifts off my shoulders.”
Christina still didn’t look up, didn’t answer.
“Christina, I’m so sorry about what happened. I couldn’t think of any other way to compel Sheriff Allen to talk. I knew he liked you. And I knew he had a conscience. I just had to figure out a way to tap into it, to give him the excuse I thought he wanted, deep inside, to confess.”
He drummed his fingers on the iron handle. God, he wished she would talk. Yell or scream or shout or something.
“I thought about telling you beforehand, but if I did, that would make you an accomplice to the trick. It didn’t have anything to do with trusting you. I just didn’t think I could put you in the position of having to manipulate a man about whom you cared.”
“I know that,” Christina whispered. “I knew it then. I was just-stunned, I guess. The thought of going to jail again-”
“I know,” Ben said. “I promise I’ll never do anything like that again.”
Christina shook her head. “Preventing Zak from being convicted of a murder he didn’t commit is a lot more important than my temporary discomfort.”
“Yes, but it was more than just playing on your terror of jail. It was taking advantage of your personal relationship. Using you to expose the man you’d-you’d become close to.”
Christina let out a soft, empty laugh. “Ben, you are so utterly … clueless.” She smiled, but it was not a happy smile. “I liked Doug fine, but I was never serious. I was just-” She bit down on her lower lip. “Never mind. Just never mind. Let’s leave.”
“No,” Ben said, “I want to say something. A few days ago, Maureen told me I was being selfish-about you. I didn’t understand what she was saying, but I think now maybe I do. I expect so much of you. I expect you to drop everything and come running every time I get the impulse to take some case. I become immersed in the case, so you have to, too. I don’t have a social life, so you can’t either. Who knows-if I hadn’t gotten in the way, you might’ve remarried, had some children. A life of your own.”
“Ben-”
“Let me finish. I’ve sucked up your whole life for years now. And it isn’t fair to you. I don’t want to hold you back, Christina. You’ve got to live your own life, and I don’t want to get in the way.”
“Ben, will you just shut up for a minute and listen?” She kicked back with her legs and lowered herself to the ground. “I don’t know what that woman has been telling you, but let me give you the straight scoop. I’m in charge of my own life. I had to learn at an early age to take care of myself, and I’ve been doing it ever since. Not to disillusion you, but you haven’t forced me to do anything. I’m the one who’s been making all the choices, all along. I decided to become a legal assistant, then later to go to law school, because it’s what I wanted to do. I decided I didn’t want to be another corporate law firm zombie, so I hitched my wagon to you, because I thought the work you were doing was more important than helping corporations screw one another back at the law firm. But make no mistake about it, Ben-you didn’t make me do anything. It was my decision the whole way.”
“Oh.” Ben felt breathless just from listening to that illuminating spiel.
“And I’ll tell you something else.” She jumped off the seesaw, flinging Ben downward. She walked to the other side of the seesaw. “I don’t regret a minute of the time we’ve spent together. Not one minute.”
She headed back toward her end of the seesaw, then stopped. “Except maybe that business with the creep who kept cutting off women’s heads and hands. I could’ve lived without that. But the rest of it-”
She turned and, smiling, gave him a firm thumbs-up.
Chapter 78
“I found it! I really did! I found it!”
Deirdre burst into Ben’s hotel room just as he was packing. She was breathless with excitement, barely able to communicate.
“Found what?”
“The tree! The one I’ve been looking for all this time!”
Ben’s lips parted. “You mean-the world’s largest cedar tree?”
“Yes! I’m almost certain of it. It’s huge-over a hundred and seventy feet tall and twenty feet in circumference. And over seven hundred years old. Older than the Declaration of Independence. Hell, older than Columbus. This tree was huge when Henry the Eighth took his first wife. It was old by the time Lincoln was writing the Emancipation Proclamation!”
“Can you show me?”
“Can I? Come on!”
Ben rushed downstairs, following in Deirdre’s wake. He wondered if all dendrochronologists were this excitable. Certainly at the moment, she was not the traditional image of the cool, logical scientist. More like a high school senior who’d just been asked to the prom.
Ben climbed into the back of the Jeep, squeezing in next to Maureen. “So,” he said, “is she excited?”
Maureen winked. “I think you could say she’s excited.”
Deirdre slid into the drivers seat and pushed the Jeep into first gear. “You have to understand,” she said as she zoomed down Main Street, taking the quickest route out of town and into the forest, “these trees have individuality. They’re like people-friends-and each one of them is different.”
“So this one is like your great-great-grandfather?” Ben asked.
Deirdre laughed. “More like my great great great great great great great great great grandfather. But he’s magnificent. I’ve never found anything like this before. Not in my entire career.”
“How did you locate it?”
“I’ve been searching systematically since I arrived. Several campers had made reports of huge old-growth trees, but their directions were never very precise. I had to do a lot of wandering around, following hunches, analyzing the growth patterns. It’s taken months.” Her grin spread from ear to ear. “But I found it! Last night, long past midnight, I found it. I could barely sleep! It’s huge-bigger than the recordholder in Forks.”
They continued driving, taking the northbound path into the forest, then moving onto a northwest trail, plunging deep into the dense foliage, past the site of the murder, even past the site of the recent fire. Deirdre was taking them all the way, deep inside the forest.
Ben had to wonder once more at the marvelous and beautiful diversity of the ancient forest. There was so much life here, he thought. So much variety. Even a city boy like himself could share in Deirdre’s excitement.
Finally, when they were considerably deeper in than Ben had been before, Deirdre stopped the Jeep. “This is as far as we can go on wheels,” she explained. “From here on out, we walk.”