We left the house and went directly to the Jeep. I took the front passenger seat and Claudel climbed in back while Quickwater continued down the road to check with the recovery team. The cigarette smoke was so thick inside the vehicle I found it hard to breathe.
Our informant was a middle-aged man, with celery green eyes and dull red hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of his head. With his white skin, lank hair, and pale reptilian eyes, he looked like something that had evolved in the waters of an underground cave. Viper was an appropriate affiliation. Like Bilodeau, he was short. Unlike Bilodeau he was not interested in a prolonged stay at the clubhouse.
Claudel spoke first.
"This better be good, Rinaldi, or your folks can start planning a funeral. Looks like your approval rating has plummeted among your peers.
Rinaldi drew smoke into his lungs, held it, then blew two streams through his nose. The borders of his nostrils blanched as they expanded with the effort.
"Who's the broad?" His voice sounded odd, as though it were being scrambled to hide his identity.
"Dr Brennan will be digging up your treasure, Frog. And you're going to help her in every way you can, aren't you?"
"Pffff." Rinaldi puffed air through his lips. Like his nostrils, their edges paled with the movement.
"And you're going to be as docile as a stiff in the morgue, right?"
"Let's get the fuck on with it."
"The morgue bit was not a casual comparison, Frog. The simile will have meaning if this turns out to be a con.
"I'm not making this shit up. There are two guys eating dirt out there. Let's get this fucking show on the road."
"Let's," agreed Claudel.
Rinaldi flicked a bony finger, rattling the handcuffs connecting his wrists.
"Circle the house and watch for a dirt track off to the right."
"That sounds like a sincere start, Frog."
Frog. Another fitting moniker, I thought, listening to Rinaldi's strange, croaky voice.
Claudel stepped out and gave a thumbs-up to Quickwater, ten yards away at the crime scene van. I turned to look and caught Rinaldi staring at me as if trying to read my genetic code. When our eyes met he held on, refusing to look away. So did I.
"Do you have a problem with me, Mr. Rinaldi?" Tasked.
"Odd job for a chick," he said, never breaking eye contact.
"I'm an odd chick. I once peed in Sonny Barger's pool." I didn't even know if the former head of the Hells Angels had a pool, but it sounded good. Besides, the Barger reference was probably lost on Frog.
Several seconds passed, then Frog smirked, gave a half shake of the head, and reached to crush his cigarette in the tiny tray between the two front seats. When the handcuffs slipped I saw two lightning bolts tattooed on his forearm, above them the words "Filthy Few"
Claudel got back in and Quickwater joined us, taking the wheel but saying nothing. As we circled the house and cut into the woods Rinaldi gazed silently out the window, no doubt preoccupied with his own terrible demons.
Rinaldi's road was little more than two tracks, and the cars and recovery van behind us moved sluggishly through the mud and wet vegetation. At one point Quickwater and Claudel were forced to get out and clear a tree that had fallen onto the path. As they dragged the rotted branches a pair of squirrels were startled and darted out of sight.
Quickwater returned clammy with sweat and muddy from the knees down. Claudel remained pristine and carried himself as if he were wearing a tuxedo. I suspected Claudel could look prim and tidy when walking around in his underwear, but doubted he ever did that.
Claudel loosened his tie a full millimeter and tapped on Rinaldi's window. I opened my door, but Frog was working on another cigarette.
Claudel tapped again and Frog hit the handle. The door popped open and smoke drifted out.
"Put that thing out before we're all on respirators. Are your memory cells still working, Frog? Do you recognize the terrain?" Claudel.
"They're here. If you'll just shut the fuck up and let me get my bearings."
Rinaldi got out and looked around. Quickwater gave me another of his stony stares as our informant did a visual sweep of the area. I ignored him and did my own inspection.
The spot had once been used as a dump. I could see cans and plastic containers, beer and wine bottles, an old mattress, and a rusted set of box springs. The ground was marked with the delicate tracks of deer, circling, crossing, and disappearing into the surrounding trees.
"I'm getting impatient, Frog," Claudel urged. "I'd count to three, as I do with children, but I'm sure I'd lose you with the higher math."
"Will you just shut the fuck-"
"Easy," Claudel warned.
"I haven't been out here in years. There was a shed, man. If I can spot the fucking shed I can walk you to them."
Frog starting making sorties into the woods, probing like a hound scenting a hare. He looked less confident with each passing moment, and I was beginning to share his doubt.
I've been on many informant-led expeditions, and in a lot of cases the trip is a waste of time. Jailhouse tips are notoriously unreliable, either because the herald is lying, or because his memory has simply failed him. LaManche and I went twice in search of a septic tank reported to be the tomb of a murder victim. Two safaris, no tank. The snitch went back to jail, and the taxpayers picked up the bill.
Finally, Rinaldi returned to the Jeep.
"It's farther up."
"How much farther?"
"What am I, a geographer? Look, I'll know the spot when I see it. There was a wooden shed."
"You're repeating yourself, Frog." Claudel looked pointedly at his watch.
"Sacre b/eu! If you'll quit riding my ass and drive a bit farther you'll get your stiffs."
"You'd better be right, Frog. Or you will be at the center of the biggest cluster fuck of the millennium."
The men climbed back into the Jeep and the procession crept slowly forward. Within twenty yards Rinaldi held up his hands. Then he gripped the seat behind my shoulders and strained forward to peer through the windshield,
"Hold it."
Quickwater braked.
"There. That's it."
Rinaldi pointed to the roofless walls of a small wooden structure. Most of the shed had fallen in on itself, and fragments of roofing and rotten wood lay strewn around the ground.
Everyone got out. Rinaldi did a three-sixty, hesitated briefly, then set off into the woods at a forty-degree angle from the shed.
Claudel and I followed, picking our way through last year's vines and creepers, and slapping back branches still weeks from budding. The sun was well above the horizon now, and the trees threw long, spiderweb shadows across the soggy ground.
When we caught up to Rinaldi he was standing at the edge of a clearing, hands dangling in front, shoulders rounded like those of a male chimp about to put on a display. The look on his face was not reassuring.
"This place has changed, man. I don't remember so many trees. We used to come out here to light bonfires and get wasted."
"I don't care how you and your friends passed your summers, Frog. You're running out of time here. You're going to be doing twenty-five hard ones and we're all going to read about how they found you with a pipe up your ass on the shower room floor."
I'd never heard Claudel quite so colorful.
Rinaldi's jaw muscles bunched, but he said nothing. Though there had been frost that morning he wore only a black T-shirt and jeans. His arms looked thin and sinewy and goose bumps puckered the pale flesh.
He turned and walked to the middle of the clearing. On the right the land sloped gently to a small creek. Rinaldi cut through a stand of long-needle pines to the bank, looked in both directions, then headed upstream. Quickwater, Claudel, and I followed. Within twenty yards Rinaldi stopped and waved his scrawny arms at an expanse of bare earth. It lay between the stream and a mound of boulders, and was scattered with branches, plastic containers and cans, and the usual detritus thrown up by seasonal flooding.