Apparently the business was very lucrative. Trish, Jax’s wife of eighteen years, managed the bulk of the selling, purchasing, and breeding of the smelly animals. There was a single springtime fleecing each year, a big event whereby other members of the community traveled to the Macaulay ranch to help with the shearing (I do not know if they roped the alpacas, or drugged them—honestly I did not care to know the details). Trish also handled the business finances, so I really didn’t think my brother had all that much to do with the ugly beasts. I made the mistake of telling him so while he grilled breakfast burritos on the back deck.
“How’s Trish’s business doing? Still a lot of money in smelly llama fur?” I said, playfully.
“You know damn well it’s our business. And they’re not llamas.”
“But the fur still stinks something fierce, you have to admit.”
“Are you picking a fight, or simply brewing one in your own mind?” Jax said.
“Ah, whatever, Jax. I’ve never witnessed you lift a finger to care for those beasts out there in the pasture. If your manhood is threatened by the woman in your life making a go of your business, I apologize.”
The punch came from way low, him still holding the wooden handle of the spatula as his fist split my lip. I reacted, wrapping the crook of my elbow around his neck, locked it, and rolled, surprising him with the leverage. We went to the ground together, but I had the advantage. For the moment.
I kept the headlock and punched him with my other fist. Three times, four. We’d fought like this many times in our youth (and even a few times in adulthood) and I knew when he broke free—and he would break free—his size and considerable abilities would outmatch me. He knew me too well.
Trish came rushing through the French doors, yelling for us to stop.
I quit punching but did not release my brother. He was still far too pissed off, as was I.
“Call it off,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Fuck you,” Jax said.
“Call it off before your girls get out here and see us.”
“Jackson, please,” Trish said. “Stop this.”
Jax put his arms out to his sides. “Done,” he said. “Get the fuck off me.”
I let go and rolled away, climbing quickly to my feet.
Jax stood slowly, wiping blood from his broken nose. “Jesus, you punch like a fucking girl.”
“Had to get my licks in quick.”
“Smart plan,” he said. “Let’s get the burritos off the grill before they burn.”
~ ~ ~
We were eating when the call came in from the precinct. Jax took the phone into the family room and then ran back into the kitchen nook where we were putting down the delicious breakfast he’d mastered on the grill.
He looked as if the wind had been stolen from him.
“What?” I said to him.
“There are two more,” he said.
“Two more what?” Meyer said, but I knew.
So did Amanda.
~ ~ ~
Sarah Jennings and Elise Porter, each approximately the same age as Melissa Grant, had disappeared, presumably in the middle of the night. Both sets of parents said their daughters went to bed at a normal hour, nothing out of the ordinary. No strange sounds, no dogs barking. Both alarmed houses had remained silent. No sign of forced entry.
In the morning, the girls’ rooms were simply empty, beds made as if they’d never slept there. The Porter parents stated they had actually looked in on Elise before they went to bed themselves. According to them, she was sound asleep, under the covers. Marcia Jennings claimed her daughter’s room was a mess the evening before. They found it spotless as well as empty the next morning.
Meyer went back to the hotel and Jax took Amanda and me to the first crime scene, at the Porter residence. The family lived what appeared to be a fairly common middleclass existence. Elise’s room was exactly as described; it did not look much like a place of abduction. Nothing was disturbed, there were no tracks, and I doubted the forensic investigators were going to find any useful prints or DNA.
Too clean.
I put on latex gloves and looked through the trash can, under the sheets and pillows, beneath the bed. Nothing.
“Here’s something,” Amanda said from the other side of the room. Between her gloved index and middle fingers was a folded piece of paper.
“This was in one of the girl’s tennis shoes,” she said.
Amanda unfolded the paper to reveal a drawing of a symbol in the middle of the page. Jax and I examined the drawing.
“Seems too detailed for a child,” I said.
“Maybe,” said Jax. “Unser, get John Porter…he was downstairs in the study.”
When the deputy had retrieved Elise Porter’s father Jax asked him:
“Have you seen this drawing before?”
“No. Where did you find it?”
“It was in her closet, in a shoe.”
“Elise doesn’t draw. I’ve never even seen her doodle.”
Thanks, John.” Jax motioned to Unser and the deputy walked John Porter from his daughter’s room.
“Bag this,” he told a member of the CSI team. His cell rang.
“Chief Macaulay.”
After a few unintelligible grunts, he disconnected the call.
“CSI team found another drawing. This one is of a man.”
“In Sarah Jennings’ room,” I said.
Jax nodded.
~ ~ ~
“Things like this just don’t happen in my town,” Jax said, driving us through the backstreets of Rocky Gap.
“Guessing they don’t happen most places,” I said.
“The Bureau has an excellent Behavioral Science Division,” Amanda said. “The drawings may be able to tell us something.”
“Don’t need any feds to put their snouts in this investigation. Not yet, anyway,” Jax said.
“I understand,” said Amanda. “Feds have access to resources that may not be available here, is all I am suggesting.”
“Here being in a dipshit town, you mean.”
“No. Here being anywhere without access to the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Quit pissing across each other’s bow,” I said. “Let’s see what this other drawing looks like. Jax, no one ever found anything like this at the Grant residence, did they?”
Jax shook his head. “Nothing.”
“What about in the father’s possessions?”
“Spence Grant’s belongings? We confiscated a number of personal files. Don’t think they’ve been fully vetted yet.”
“We need to get on that,” I said.
Jax dialed his cell.
~ ~ ~
When we arrived at the Jennings’ home the CSI team had the drawing bagged. I removed it with gloved hands. The detail, like our other drawing, was incredible, and I could not stop staring at the face before me.
“That’s Tilson Wayne.”
~ ~ ~
FBI Field Agent in Charge, Tanner Noon, had waited for a case like this his entire career. Movement up and down the ladder in the Bureau was largely based on the cases an agent worked—and more importantly, the cases solved. Being reassigned to the Coeur d’Alene field office just five years out of Quantico should have been the death blow to Noon’s career. It nearly was. Nothing ever happened in the panhandle of Idaho. There hadn’t been a bank robbery in almost seventy years. The best Noon could hope for was a heist at one of the casinos on the reservation.
When the double-homicide was reported in Rocky Gap, Noon’s spine had literally tingled. The town was definitely within his federal jurisdiction, but a homicide—even two of them—did not make a federal case. However, the Grant girl was missing. That suggested the possibility of a kidnapping, which was a federal crime. Chief of Police Jax Macaulay had been able to hold off Noon and his agents under the auspices that they didn’t actually know young Melissa Grant had been abducted.
Not yet, anyway.
Then the gods smiled down on Noon. Special Agent Amanda Byrne decided to give the Coeur d’Alene field office a call. Noon had no idea what Byrne was doing this far west and north; she was assigned to the coveted New York office.
“Agent Noon?”
“Yes. How are you, Amanda?”
“Fine, sir. I’m just north of you, in Rocky Gap.”
“Official business?”
“Not exactly, sir.”
“Call me Tanner.”
Noon was hurt. Clearly Byrne didn’t remember him, a fact that perplexed him nearly as much as it stung his pride. They went through Quantico together. That he outranked her was purely technical—a matter of a few extra months on the job. Noon had become an agent right after the academy where Amanda first participated in a certification class for elite marksmen.
“I know you’re aware of the missing girl here,” Amanda said.
“I am.”
“They’re in over their heads up here, sir.”
“Unfortunately it’s more complicated than that.”
“I understand. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Obviously the Bureau would love to assist. We haven’t got jurisdiction over the homicides, however, and so far our help hasn’t been requested.”
“Can I speak off the record?”
“Go ahead,” Noon said.
“There have been two more abductions.”
“Jesus.”
“Jax Macaulay is sitting on the evidence. He obviously wants to solve this thing locally, but in my opinion, sir, that isn’t going to happen.”
“I can’t move until I have something official. You know that. A police report. Something.”
“Give me your fax number,” Amanda said.
Ten minutes after the phone call with Agent Byrne ended, the documents he needed came through on the fax. Police reports detailing the three abductions, including a phone call from the first victim.
Tanner Noon called his superiors in Boise, who then called their superiors in Washington. The official report was a triple kidnapping in Rocky Gap, Idaho. Noon smiled deliciously. His superiors approved three helicopters out of Boise and a hundred field agents from regional and national offices. The contingency would fall under his command—it was agency protocol, but to Tanner Noon it was a life raft tossed into the pond he’d been drowning in for the past several years.
The army of agents would be arriving by the next morning and Noon would then storm northward to Rocky Gap. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Jax Macaulay’s face, the arrogant prick. He would decide later whether or not Chief Macaulay would face federal obstruction of justice charges.
~ ~ ~
“You did what?” I said when Amanda shared her phone call with the Coeur d’Alene office of the FBI.
“I had to. There wasn’t a choice.”
“It’s you who is so fond of telling me there’s always a choice.”
“You’re right. The choice I made was the necessary one. Those girls need every resource available.”
“Didn’t you think talking to me might be a good thing?”
“I knew what you’d say. And I have my duty, just like you. Nothing is getting done here, and it’s my opinion your brother is in over his head.”
“And me, too, is what you didn’t say.”
“I didn’t say it because I don’t believe it. But you aren’t exactly running the investigation here, Bobby.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t want to fight about this. I know how things are with your brother. I think half the reason he called you up here was so that you could watch him solve the case.”
“And save the day,” I said.
“Exactly.”
I knew she was right. Jax was in over his head. In fact, had the investigation been mine, I would have conceded that federal resources would only help. If Jax had included the FBI agents in Coeur d’Alene early on he likely could have avoided a jurisdictional pissing contest. As it stood, I was pretty certain we’d have seventy-five FBI agents here by morning and there would not be any question about who was running the show.
It still angered me that Amanda had not given me the respect of knowing what she planned to do before she actually did it.
“Look,” I said. “I understand. Jax needs to prove himself. Always has. To me, to his superiors, to everyone. He’s a good fucking cop, though. He and I both deserved more than an end around.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Seriously. I hope you see my reasoning, though.”
“Next time, talk to me. You need to trust me.”
“I do trust you. I just didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to circumvent your brother. This way, it’s on me.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“How do we tell Jax?”
“I notice now that it’s time to tell Jax, it’s back to ‘we’.”
“Funny.”
“We both tell him. I’ll call him and see if he’s at the precinct or at home.”
~ ~ ~
We met Jax at his office. He’d slept there the night before, though he looked as if he had not rested in days. His face was drawn and covered in scraggly growth. There were bags under both bloodshot eyes.
We were both worried about how hard he was going to take the news about Tanner Noon and the swarm of FBI agents that were no doubt already assembling to crush my brother’s hopes to save the town he’d sworn to protect. I would have felt similarly. Sometimes the logic of a decision is still not enough to assuage the wounding of its audacity. It’s human nature; no one wants to be told he’s not good enough for the task.
Least of all, my brother.
Jax sat in stony silence after Amanda described the phone call to him. Honestly, I’d never seen him react this way. His face was a natural color of pink, not red. His breathing was regular. He stared down some benign thought.
“How many?” is all he said.
“A hundred agents. Three choppers,” Amanda said.
“The air support and the extra bodies will be a huge help,” Jax said.
“A dozen of the agents have training in rough terrain tracking. Another two dozen are experts in kidnappings, abductions, whatever. Point is they will be bringing a lot of talent to bear on this situation.”
“I get it,” he said.
“Look, Jax…” I said, but he stifled me with a palm pressed to the air.
“We’re going to need a better command post,” Jax said.
Amanda looked at me and I nodded.
“They’re bringing their own,” she said.
“Of course they are.”
-CHAPTER TEN-
THE SHEER show of FBI force was impressive. I’d seen it a few times before in Denver, and though most local cops would never admit it, the feds really did have all the resources and when they mobilized, it was worth stopping to stare. Blue jackets with FBI emblazoned brashly across the middle of the back in stark yellow contrast; two large motor homes converted into state of the art command centers, painted pearl black, with opaque, bulletproof windows; three government issued helicopters with three crack pilots.
I only hoped the arsenal would help us get those three girls back. There comes a point when territorial behavior needs to sit down, shut up, and allow common sense to take over. We had three missing eleven-year-old girls and the unspoken concern was that these might not be the last of them. After all, we couldn’t protect every household, every bedroom, and every eleven-year-old girl in the county. Not even the FBI could accomplish that—but with numbers like those, it was a fine start.
“Tanner Noon,” the agent in charge said, introducing himself to the collective of Jax, Amanda, and myself.
“Special Agent Amanda Byrne. We spoke on the phone.”
“You don’t remember me, Agent?”
“Sir?”
“We attended Quantico together. You turned down my advances more times than I care to recount.”
“The bad crew cut,” Amanda said, smiling.
“I was young. Trying to save a buck.”
“Good to see you again, sir.”
“Tanner, please. Introduce me to your friends.”
“Chief Jackson Macaulay,” Jax interjected before Amanda could do it for him. “We’ve spoken also.”
“I recognize the voice,” Noon said, extending five manicured nails and a hand to go with them. “Sorry for the intrusion.”
“Yeah,” Jax said, and shook Noon’s hand as limply as I’d ever seen him.
“You must be the detective from Denver,” he said. He didn’t offer his hand to me. Apparently I was in the wrong pond. Or with the wrong girl. I couldn’t yet decide which.
“Bobby Macaulay. Mac is fine.”
“All right then,” Noon said. “Join me in Command One for a briefing?”
~ ~ ~
If the command vehicles looked impressive from the outside, they were pure technological genius on the interior. Not one inch was underutilized. I had to give the federales credit: this was no vacation home, filled with overpriced creature comforts. They’d flown them in to Lewiston-Nez Pearce County Airport on a C-5 Galaxy transport plane, along with a dozen SUVs and the army of agents that had turned the trailhead into a staging ground the size of two football fields.
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