"Spencer,.Wen.-.Ukiah.2.-.Tainted.Trail" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)
Max looked up the aisle. "The flight attendants have the cart out, and they're serving something. It won't be very much, kid. A sandwich, a cookie or two, and a soda."
The flight attendants seemed not to notice that the plane jerked and bucked on invisible airwaves. They served the food with practiced smiles.
Ukiah glanced at the empty center seat. "You think Kraynak will eat his?"
"Probably not. He'll be lucky to get out of the restroom this flight. He'd hoped to grab something for motion sickness in Houston, thinking we'd have time in the layover."
For some reason unfathomable to Ukiah, one couldn't fly directly from Pittsburgh to Portland. Stranger yet, they had flown south to go north. A storm front over Houston delayed their landing and their layover consisted of a dash through the sprawling, crowded airport.
Max looked at him warily now. "How do you feel?"
"I'm cold and hungry," Ukiah admitted, then realized Max was asking if he was going to be airsick. "I think after the first handful of jiggles, my body decided to ignore my inner ear as an alarmist. Remember that time on Lake Erie when Kraynak took us fishing with his brother-in-law?"
"God, don't say anything else, or I'll start puking." Max undid his seat belt, stood cautiously, opened the overhead compartment, and tossed a folded blanket to Ukiah. He pulled out his briefcase, closed the overhead, and sat back down. "I've got a Snickers bar or two in here." He thumbed open the locks. He fished out the candy and handed it to Ukiah. "Remind me to stock up at the Portland airport."
"Thanks." Ukiah glanced into the briefcase. Taking up the most space in the briefcase was a fat folder marked OREGON, UKIAH—BENNETT DETECTIVE AGENCY FILE #117. "Is that my case file?"
They had first met when Ukiah's adopted mothers hired Max to find out Ukiah's real identity. Max had failed. In hindsight, there was no way Max could have succeeded. Ukiah's background had been too strange for anyone to guess, and sometimes, even believe. The case had, however, introduced Max to Ukiah's tracking abilities and inspired a partnership that specialized in finding missing persons.
Max nodded, flipping open the file. "I grabbed it as we were running out the door. I kept all the geographic maps of the Umatilla National Park, road maps, campground guides, and so forth. I figured that it would prove to be useful."
"Can I see?" Ukiah took out one of the maps and opened it. It showed the mountains of the national park in a series of squiggly lines. Spreading it out on his lap, he studied it for several minutes as he ate the candy, shaking his head.
Max noticed the motion. "What's wrong?"
"I lived here for so long, Max. Maybe over two hundred years. I knew every inch of it. This map, though, is so abstract, I can't relate to a single feature. I wonder how much it's changed in the last eight years. Am I going to be able to find my way around?"
"All you need to worry about, kid, is Alicia's trail. Wherever she went, you follow. I'll handle the maps."
Ukiah glanced to the back of the plane. The right restroom door stayed firmly shut as a short line rotated through the left. "You think Kraynak is right, and she's in serious trouble?"
Max shrugged. "He thinks so, he's footing the bill, and we owe him a favor. I'm hoping we'll get out there and find out that she just let the batteries of her phone die or some such nonsense."
"What are we charging him?" Their normal tracking fee was a thousand dollars a day, a bit steep for a police detective to pay.
Max looked sheepish. "Hell, I didn't talk to him about it. It's Alicia! If need be, we'll do a this as a freebie."
Ukiah nodded without a quibble. Technically, he was a full partner of their detective agency, but only because Max had given him half the company after Ukiah saved his life. Outwardly seventeen years Ukiah's senior, Max still made most of the business decisions, especially the financial ones. Ukiah supposed it was just as well—being raised by wolves gave him a very loose grasp on the concept of money.
Kraynak came back from the restroom, seeming even larger than normal in the close quarters of the jet. He reeked faintly of vomit and old cigarette smoke resurrected by water. "Can I sit on the end?"
Max handed Ukiah his briefcase with a "Hold this" and started to shift over his other belongings to the middle seat. Ukiah thumbed through the folder. Max kept meticulous records and the folder was no exception. A photo of Ukiah at thirteen was clipped to the inside cover. Maps in the front. Area info next. There was a copy of a newspaper article tucked in before a bundle of receipts. Ukiah pulled it out as Max sat beside him and Kraynak carefully settled his tall, solid body into the end seat.
INFORMATION SOUGHT ON WOLF BOY was the headline of the small article circled in red.
"Max? What's this? This sounds like me."
Max looked over and frowned for a moment in recall. "That sounded real close, but I had to discount it."
"Why?"
Max tapped the "1933" written in red ink at the top, next to the East Oregonian legend. "Because the kid disappeared in 1933 and that would make him over eighty."
"Or over two hundred," Ukiah whispered.
Max glanced at him puzzled. Understanding came with a slight widening of his eyes. "Oh, shit." He looked down at the paper again. "Ukiah, this could have been you. I thought you were a normal kid at the time."
When his Mom Jo found him running with the wolves, there had been no way of knowing his birth date or exact age. He showed signs that he had started into puberty, so his Mom Jo had assigned him the age of thirteen. In actuality, they learned later, he was several hundred years old; after growing to maturity, he aged only when he was wounded. The rough-and-tumble life of a private investigator was the only reason he couldn't still pass as a thirteen-year-old. A series of almost fatal accidents and shootings made him look almost eighteen, but certainly not the twenty-one stated on his driver's license.
Ukiah flipped through the case report looking for an indication that Max had followed up on the newspaper clipping. "You talked to this man?"
Max considered the overhead compartments as he thought. "This was five years ago, Ukiah, and I don't have your memory. I talked to him, but not face to face. It was over the phone. I remember it was a short conversation. I told him I found the article in the library's archive and that I was trying to establish someone's true identity, but I know I didn't go into details with him. I think one of my first questions was 'When did the boy disappear?' After he said 1933 I thanked him for his time and cut the conversation short."
Ukiah found the name, address, and phone number of Jesse Kicking Deer in the case report. Max had noted, Description and location match, but age is completely wrong. "I would love to go see this guy. I wonder if he's still at this address."
Max picked up the phone built into the seat in front of them. "Let's see."
The phone number listed in the file was no longer in service. Undaunted, Max called information and gave the name and address.
"I'm showing a Claire Kicking Deer at that address," the operator said over the drone of the engines, "but that number is unlisted."
Max thanked the operator and hung up. "With a name like that, it's a fair bet they're related." Max consulted his PDA. "We're landing in Pendleton at five-thirty, if we don't miss the commuter in Portland. We'll need to rent the cars, load them, and then it's an hour drive down to the campground." He tapped through a series of pages. "We're not going to be able to do any actual tracking tonight; I don't want to be stumbling around in the dark."
"I can track at night," Ukiah said.
Max gave him a cold look. "I know, kid, but I can't see in the dark. I'm not letting you track without backup." Max considered the rest of the day. "Three is overkill for what we're doing tonight. Let's split up. We'll rent a second car. Kraynak and I will load the gear, find out what we can on the search-and-rescue efforts, and then check into the hotel. You can see if you can find Jesse Kicking Deer."
Ukiah slipped both the photograph and the news clipping into his wallet for his meeting with Jesse Kicking Deer. "Is that okay with you, Kraynak?"
Kraynak didn't answer.
Glancing past Max, Ukiah discovered that the homicide detective was gone again. "We've got to make sure he takes something before we get on that commuter plane to Pendleton."
Portland International Airport, Portland, Oregon
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
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