Raising the Stakes

The men shook hands. “Truth is, though, I suspect you’re not going to come up with anything.”

“The odds are that you’re right, but you know me. I’ll put all the stuff I don’t find into a fifty-page report, fit the report into a shiny binder and your client will be impressed.”

Both men grinned. “Keep me posted,” Gray said, and Jack promised that he would.

* * *

Two weeks later, Ballard phoned late one morning.

“Got some stuff,” he said.

Gray suggested they meet for lunch at a small Italian place midway between their offices.

“So,” Gray said, after they’d ordered, “what do you have? Information? Or fifty pages of B.S. in a shiny binder?”

Jack chuckled. “Information, surprisingly enough. Not enough to fill fifty pages, but solid.”

“You found Lincoln’s granddaughter?”

“No, not yet. But I figured you’d want an update. I found the town where Orianna Lincoln lived and died, and some people who knew her.”

“Orianna Lincoln,” Gray said. “So, even though she was born after Ben and Nora were divorced, he acknowledged the child as his flesh and blood?”

“Careful, counselor.” Ballard sat back as their first courses were served. “You’re leaping to conclusions. All I know is that Nora Lincoln put Ben Lincoln’s name on Orianna’s birth certificate.” He stabbed a grape tomato, lifted it to his mouth and chewed vigorously. “Orianna was born in ‘52, same as your uncle said, in a little town in Colorado. Her mother—Nora—died in an auto accident not long afterward. Orianna was bounced from foster home to foster home, grew up into what you might expect.”

“Her father didn’t raise her?”

“Ben Lincoln? No. He lit out for Alaska in ‘53, died up there in a blizzard a few years later. The kid—”

“Orianna.”

“Right. She grew up, got herself into a little trouble. Nothing much, just some shoplifting, a little grass, a couple of prostitution convictions.”

“Sounds like a sweetheart.”

“Right. NCIC—the National Criminal Investigation Center—has her getting busted for petty crap all over the southwest. Eventually she ended up with some bozo in Fort Stockton, Texas. He walked out on her and the next record we have shows she set up housekeeping in a trailer park in a place called Queen City, up in the mountains in northern Arizona.”

“Alone?”

“Yup.” Ballard speared another tomato and grinned. “But that didn’t keep her from leading a full life, if you get my drift.” The detective took a sip of water, swallowed and leaned over the table. “The lady believed in an open door policy. One man in, another out, no stopping to take a breather in-between. No kids to slow her down until 1976, when something must have gone wrong with her planning. She gave birth to a girl she named Dawn.”

Gray raised his eyebrows. “Classy name.”

“Yeah, and I figure that was all that was classy in the kid’s life. Dawn lived in the trailer with mama until she was seventeen. Then she married a local name of…” Ballard reached into his breast pocket and took out a small leather notebook. “Name of Kitteridge. Harman Kitteridge.”

“In Queen City?”

“Yup, Queen City. Two traffic lights and half a dozen cheap bars. And local branches of every whacko political organization you ever heard of.” He grinned. “Plus some you’re lucky you haven’t.”

Gray put down his fork. “It sounds like heaven.”

“You got that right. Two days there, I was ready to grab a rifle and go looking for black helicopters. Kitteridge lives on the outskirts of town, on top of a mountain. He’s got a cabin up there. Apparently his grandpappy built it with his own hands.” Ballard put down his notebook

and turned his attention to his salad. “You can almost hear the banjoes playing in the background.”

Gray nodded, picked up his fork and poked at his antipasto. Just what he needed, he thought glumly, a trip to the ass end of nowhere for a stimulating conversation with Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge. If he’d thought about her at all during the last weeks, he’d imagined a more up-to-date version of that defiant, almost beautiful woman in the photo, but this conversation had put things in perspective. He could almost envision Dawn Kitteridge, country twang, lank hair, bare feet, gingham dress and all.

“Lucky Dawn,” he said, “she got to trade her trailer for a shack.”