Light Before Day

by Christopher Rice

  I grinned. He slid off his stool and tapped his hand on the bar as if he had solved a calculus equation. "A guy like you comes in here asking about Corey McCormick—that's gotta mean something." I let him figure out what it meant. He let out a war whoop that made the bartender jump. "I'm sorry," he said once he'd reassembled himself. "You didn't understand. You coming in here and telling me Corey McCormick was gay. That's like Santa Claus appearing to a six-year-old in the middle of July."

  I didn't bother telling him that Corey McCormick was also dead. Caroline looked at me suspiciously from the other end of the bar and ordered a vodka and soda. "What about his friend? Reynaldo Reyez?"

  Bailey winced and took a slug of his beer. "I remember him, too. Creepy little lad. He always got made fun of 'cause he was kind of girly. First day of his freshman year, this guy Joe Rogers was picking on him in tbe lunch line. Joe was a real ass and he wouldn't let up. Joe was about twice the size of Reynaldo, but Reynaldo just hauled off and decked the guy. All of a sudden Joe's bleeding all over the place in front of everyone. Turned out Reynaldo had his keys in his fist."

  "Creepy and smart," I agreed. "Did Reynaldo get expelled?"

  "No way," Bailey said. "No one was going to rat him out. Every kid they talked to said Joe Rogers was lying through his teeth about the keys. Everyone said he fell 'cause Reynaldo hit him so hard. The guy had it coming. Trust me. Corey was there, actually. I guess he was impressed.

  After that, he took Reynaldo under his wing." His eyes brightened. "Holy hell. Do you think Corey and Reynaldo were actually—"

  "What about Corey's grandmother, Bailey?"

  "Lucinda," he said. "She owned a cattle ranch out on 198, just before you hit town." I remembered the area of gnarled tree trunks and stinking mud plots that Caroline and I had passed on the way in.

  "Does she have any friends who might still be around?"

  "Claire Shipley," he said immediately. "She works over at Linton Realty." He averted his eyes and took a small sip of his beer. "Lucinda was her only friend. She never replaced her."

  "Claire's difficult, huh?"

  "Look in her oven," he said. "You might find some children."

  "But I understand Lucinda was a popular woman," I said. "Any idea why she was friends with a witch?"

  "No clue," he said. "Claire used to manage some things out on Lucinda's ranch. The place was about to go under before Lucinda got sick. Claire was bitter about it. One day in the supermarket, she chewed my mothers ear off about how big industry was going to kill the whole valley."

  "Sounds like she had a point," I said.

  "Maybe," he said. "But Claire had just rear-ended my mother in the parking lot, and the two of them didn't even know each other. It may be a good point, but it's no excuse for running right into someone, is it?"

  "No, it isn't, Bailey," I said with a smile he seemed to appreciate. "So she's a real estate agent now?"

  "Barely," he said. "Someone had to hire her. She's obviously not going anywhere."

  As Bailey gave me directions to Linton Realty, I felt Caroline's hand come to rest on my shoulder. "We better go if we want to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," she said.

  "That's not on tonight," Bailey said icily.

  "It's a rerun," Caroline told him. She walked out of the bar.

  "Is that your sister?" Bailey asked.

  Once we were back in the Tahoe, Caroline put her sunglasses on and sighed.

  "I take it this is boring you," I finally said.

  She powered the window down and hooked the heel of one sneaker on the ledge. "Can we have sex later?" she asked. "I hear gay guys give women good oral sex. They get a lot of practice when they're closeted because they can't get it up to do anything else."

  "Who told you that? The Fab Five?"

  "You're right. I'm bored."

  "Well, get ready, 'cause Claire Shipley is all yours. You two sound like the perfect match."

  More sullenness. "Can you think of any ways we can check out Eddie Cairns's story?"

  "Amy's going to follow up on the old rancher he talked about and on any fires in the area,"

  she said.

  I didn't point out that Amy wasn't exactly going to be able to get the FBI to run a VICAP

  search on the term old rancher. "Look, Caroline, the only thing that seems real about Reynaldo Reyez is what happened here."

  "Fine," she said. "But the abducted boys are next. I want to find witnesses, other family members. Maybe one of the other lads talked to someone, the way Caden did to my mother."

  I nodded, but I didn't say anything. What she was asking for could take months, and even if the kids had talked, I didn't think we had any more use for strange tales of demons and government agents appearing to small boys in the night.

  The offices of Lily Linton Realty were located in a strip mall that looked exactly like the two squeezing the gay bar building. The front window was plastered with color listings for one-story tract homes and California bungalows. Claire Shipley was the listing agent for one property, an empty lot in the southern part of town. I took down her cell phone number.

  The receptionist was leafing through a copy of People when we walked in. She was not much older than the two of us, but she was under the impression that working at a real estate agency meant you had to dress like a matron. When I asked her if Claire Shipley was in, she looked at us with unpleasant surprise. "Are you guys interested in that lot?" she asked.

  "We're interested in talking to Claire Shipley," Caroline said.

  The receptionist's penciled eyebrows arched. "Why?" she asked, baffled.

  I smiled. "Claire's a peach, isn't she?"

  The receptionist cackled. I cackled right back. "I tell you. On some days I just want to take that woman by the—"

  "The old bitch rear-ended me last week," Caroline interjected. "She gave me bullshit insurance information and I plan on suing her ass. You want to tell me where she lives?"

  I stared down at my feet and tried to wish myself out of the office. The receptionist stared at Caroline as if she had just performed a brief soft-shoe in front of her desk. Then she gave us Claire Shipley's address.

  Claire Shipley lived in a secluded neighborhood in southwest Visalia that was made up mostly of empty lots and untamed California oaks. Her driveway was empty and her windows were dark.

  The lot she was trying to sell was two blocks away. Her house was a one-story aluminum-siding box that sat on concrete blocks. The small space between her narrow driveway and her front steps featured every nonblossoming plant known to man. There was a chain-link fence around her entire property and a line of poplar trees in back. Through their shimmering leaves, a large empty field stretched toward a highway. The field had a developer's sign stuck in it.

  Caroline and I did not get out of the Tahoe. "Should we call her on her cell phone?"

  "She'll probably hang up."

  Caroline exhaled loudly, reclined her seat, and shoved the bill of her baseball cap down on her head. Within minutes, her breaths were slow and even, and her head was turned toward the window. Abducting and torturing Eddie Cairns had taken a lot out of her.

  The sun went down. Across the field behind Claire Shipley's house, the highway turned into a stream of headlights.

  Caroline's jabs about my investigative technique had affected me. I was hoping that Claire Shipley could give us some details about Corey's mental state before he had run away from his grandmother, some indication of whether Corey had believed his best friend was still alive somewhere. All I had to go on was an offhand comment from Corey's uncle about how Corey had refused to speculate on Reynaldo's fate. It was a matchstick supporting a ten-pound theory A year had elapsed between Corey's meeting with Spinotta and the first abduction in the Central Valley. Maybe that was how long it had taken Corey to track down Reynaldo.

  After a while I dozed off. I woke to the ringing of a cell phone that wasn't mine. Caroline was already sitting up behind the wheel, clearing her throat and
pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket.

  "It's Amy," she told me. She answered without saying anything and listened. From what I could hear, Amy sounded excited. It was nine-thirty. I had slept for almost two hours. Claire Shipley's house was still dark, the driveway still empty. I wondered what an angry, friendless old woman was doing out at nine-thirty on a Sunday night.

  Caroline started the car and pulled away from the curb. When I asked her what was going on, she hung up the cell phone and dropped it to her lap. "Amy got something," she said.

  "What?" I asked.

  "A sighting," she answered. "A gas station attendant down in Wasco saw the Vanished Three a few weeks ago. She says it wasn't the first time, either."

  'Which one did the attendant see?"

  "That's what we're going to find out."

  She started speeding in the direction of Highway 99, a north-south freeway that parallels Interstate 5, but further to the east. The Vanished Three had been spotted in the Central Valley on more than one occasion. Joseph Spinotta was somewhere close by.

  As we drove alongside the barren field, I turned around and located the back of Claire Shipley's tiny house. A mustard-colored corona of light had appeared in the curtain of poplar leaves along her back fence; the security light above her back door had turned on in our wake.

  Before her house faded from view, I saw the light in Claire Shipley's kitchen had gone on as well.

  "She was home," I said.

  "What?" Caroline asked.

  "Claire Shipley was home the whole time," I said. "She was waiting us out. Someone must have told her we were coming."

  I remembered the light that had gone on in the eyes of Bailey the waiter when I had told him Corey McCormick was gay. Maybe he had called Claire Shipley to gloat, and told her we were in town asking questions about her close friend's grandson. Questions she obviously did not want to answer.

  The small town of Wasco was only a short drive from where I had come down out of the mountains earlier that day. I glimpsed a sign that informed us that Wasco was the rose capital of the nation, but I didn't see any roses anywhere. We paralleled a set of railroad tracks and passed block after block of one-story tract homes.

  We passed out of the town's limits and into an island of sodium vapor lights. Several large service stations ran along either side of the highway. Eighteen-wheelers slumbered in their parking lots. Amy had given Caroline the name of a gas station attendant who worked at a Stop

  'N' Go that sat at the end of the strip, close to Interstate 5.

  She was a tiny Hispanic woman with a huge mane of black hair that was about to come free of its ponytail. On the counter behind her, I saw faxed versions of the photos we had given Amy earlier that day. Caroline explained to the girl that the men in question had been hanging out with the daughter of a friend of hers, and she was afraid they were a bad influence. It was a cover story Amy had repeated to everyone to whom she had sent pictures of Spinotta and the Vanished Three.

  The attendant told us that she had seen Roger Vasquez, the Latin lover, and Ben Clamp, the ail-American jock, on three occasions that she could recall over the past few months. All of their visits had been at night—she guessed around eleven o'clock, but she couldn't be sure. No Terrance Davidson. No Joseph Spinotta. Each time, the men had made polite conversation and purchased a full tank of gas and various snack foods. They had come in the same car, a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows. She didn't know the plate number. She figured they were road trippers from LA, but she had never asked them. She also threw in the fact that she thought they were perfect gentlemen and wouldn't be a bad influence on anyone's daughter.

  "Any dents on the Suburban?" Caroline asked.

  I had been trying to hide my reaction to the woman's report, but the attendant saw something on my face that made her suspicious. She narrowed her eyes and placed one hand on the edge of the counter in front of her.

  "Look," Caroline said in a gentle voice that shocked me. "I'm sorry if this is too much information, but my friends daughter—she's pregnant. These guys don't seem like the type who pay child support, if you know what I mean. They sure move around a lot."

  Her words hit their target. The attendant made a small indignant sound in her throat.

  Caroline gave the woman her cell phone number and asked her to call if the guys came in again.

  She agreed.

  I walked out into the smell of diesel fumes and the deep drone of idling eighteen-wheelers. I got Caroline's road atlas out of the car and laid it on the hood. The town of Wasco sat on Highway 46, which formed an east-west connection between Highway 99 and Interstate 5, the major north-south arteries of the Central Valley.

  Caroline appeared behind me. "What direction do you think they were coming from?"

  The map told me that from where we were standing, Highway 46 traveled a westward path through a whole lot of nothing, the town of Paso Robles, then the rolling vineyard country that met the Pacific Ocean. To the east, Highway 46 dead-ended into Highway 99. East of their intersection was the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.

  "East or west," I said.

  "Why not north and south?"

  "It's a guess," I said. "LA is south and these guys aren't going anywhere near it. I suspect they're someplace isolated."

  "Fine," she said. "East of here, you've got the Greenhorn Mountains. There's a lot of cabins along Highway 155. It goes straight up into the mountains until you hit Lake Isabella. There's not much up there. A few towns. The Kern River Valley. It's pretty isolated."

  "And west?" I asked her.

  "More nothing, but not much in the way of mountains," she answered. "Forty-six takes you through Paso Robles, then through the Coast Ranges. But the range is different down here. The peaks aren't as high, and the area close to the ocean has a lot of vineyards. Then you hit Cambria. Then you hit the Pacific Ocean."

  She was being as patient with me as possible. "So what do you think, Adam? East or west?"

  "These guys are stopping here for a reason," I said. "They're either coming down out of the mountains to the east, or through the hills so that they can take the 5 or the 99 to the north.

  They're traveling at night, and they're driving a black Chevy Suburban with tinted windows.

  That's not exactly inconspicuous, so I doubt they're sightseeing. Spinotta stole enough money to get them a more inconspicuous car, if they want to take a joy ride."

  I had her full attention. "They're buying snack foods," I went on. "I bet they get their real provisions closer to home. They're also buying a full tank of gas. That means they're either real close, which I doubt, or they're low on gas by the time they get here."

  "So they're close. But not that close."

  From the look of the highway on the map, if the Vanished Three were picking this place to get onto Interstate 5, they didn't have a lot of other options close to their home base. From the east, several different freeways flowed down out of the Sierras and toward Highway 99 and Interstate 5. From the west, the options were fewer and far between.

  "They're coming from the west," I said.

  "A Suburban," she said. Now she was the one thinking out loud. "There's a lot of room in a Suburban, and there's only two of them. You said you thought they were picking up the kids at a drop-off point."

  "That might explain one of the trips," I said. "But the attendant saw them several times over the past few weeks. You think those were all pickups? You think they've abducted two more kids since Caden McCormick?"

  "No, I don't. I would have heard about it."

  "These guys are traveling long distances at night," I said. "On a regular basis. I bet if we visited some more gas stations along this stretch we might find someone else who's seen them."

  "So what the hell are they doing?" she asked.

  "I don't know."

  An eighteen-wheeler roared to life several feet away and then blasted past us as it pulled out of the gas station and headed west t
oward Interstate 5.1 watched it depart, its rim lights fading into the night.

  "The boys," Caroline said. "They're out picking the boys." She turned to face me. "Maybe these road trips are about finding the boys, picking the right ones."

  "You think they tell Reynaldo which kids to abduct?" I asked. "That shoots my whole theory to hell. That means they picked Corey's brother on their own."

  "Maybe it was a coincidence," she said.

  "I seriously doubt that, Caroline. If they keep ordering Reynaldo to abduct attractive young boys, then he's going to catch on sooner or later that their intentions aren't pure. I bet they give him as few orders as possible. The more requests they make, the more suspicious he might get.

  And besides, Reynaldo's got to abduct these boys. Reynaldo has to decide whether the circumstances are right."

  "You're guessing, Adam."

  "We both are."

  A silence fell. I got the impression that she was cutting me some slack for the first time that day. A light breeze lifted her hair under the back of her cap.

  "Maybe Reynaldo knows," she finally said. "Maybe Reynaldo knows what they're going to do to these kids, and he thinks it's better than what might happen to them if they stayed with their parents."

  It was a good explanation for why Corey couldn't go to Reynaldo for help once he discovered what Joseph was really up to, because Reynaldo knew full well what was going to be done to Caden McCormick, and he didn't care.

  "My mother did some research," Caroline said, "about what happens to these kids growing up. How they live, how they can die. Their parents keep acetone in the freezer. Sometimes the children drink it by accident. When they die, the parents just get rid of the body. This one woman, she thought her kids were possessed by Satan, so she made them drink bleach every morning. Another one used her daughter—"

  "Enough, Caroline."

  To my surprise, she stopped giving me the gory details. Yet she had made me question what was a better fate for the four young boys who had been abducted, being abused and killed at home or nursed back to health and molested in a state of near catatonia. I forced myself to recall the video I had seen the night before.