Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

by C. J. Box

  “You’re lying again. Melissa ran into her, and your wife didn’t know a thing she was talking about.”

  Moreland sighed. “Mr. McGuane, I know this is tough on you. But it doesn’t need to be so tough. My offer still stands. I’m more than willing to help you and your wife adopt another child. I’m surprised you’ve waited this long, actually. The sooner we can get the proceedings under way the sooner you can have a new baby.”

  “What is your game?” I said, nearly shouting. “What is it?”

  “There’s no game. I explained everything to you. My son needs to be accountable. Simple as that.”

  “I think you know everything your son is involved in,” I said. “You two have some kind of unholy alliance.”

  “Oh please.” Moreland sounded genuinely ticked off. “I’m beginning to think I made a mistake giving you and your wife so much time. It’s given you weeks to martyr yourselves, and you’ve started to see conspiracies everywhere. I thought you were better than this, frankly.”

  “You’re trying to steal our daughter!” I shouted. “Jesus, did you think we’d just let you?”

  “You mean Garrett’s daughter and my granddaughter,” Moreland said wearily. “I’m afraid we’ve had this discussion before.”

  “Are you going to tell me you don’t know your son is involved with Mexican gangs? With Sur-13?”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Mr. McGuane.”

  “Deny, deny, deny,” I said. “Where does the truth fit in all of this, or is that something you don’t worry about anymore? Are you so used to handing down judgments that are obeyed that you think you’re a god? That what ever you say just is?”

  “You’re embarrassing yourself, Mr. McGuane. And it’s a pathetic thing to hear.”

  I paused. I was shaking. I could tell by his voice that he was going to hang up at any second. I wished I could be more coherent.

  “Have your son sign the papers,” I said, “so nothing else will happen.”

  His voice was maddeningly firm and reasonable. “Please think about what you’re saying. Are you threatening me? Are you really threatening a sitting federal district court judge? I think we should both just pretend that you didn’t just say that, Mr. McGuane, or otherwise you could be charged with a federal crime. Not that I’m threatening you— I’m not. I’m informing you. You don’t know what you’re saying. We can chalk it up to inexperience and runaway emotion.”

  “What are you hiding?” I said.

  “This conversation is coming to a close, I’m afraid.”

  “What is it?”

  “Goodbye, Mr. McGuane.”

  “Look,” I said, “I may just be a rube from Montana who is in over my head. But Melissa is the most wonderful woman I’ve ever met. She’s a fantastic mother, and she loves Angelina like no mother ever loved her child. You can’t take our daughter away. I won’t let it happen.”

  “You have five days, Mr. McGuane. Use them wisely. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go to work.”

  “Don’t hang up!”

  “Goodbye.”

  I DROVE TO SHELBY’S on 18th—the place Cody had taken me to—and pasted a fifty on the damp bar. “Keep ’em coming,” I told the bartender. “Don’t stop until this fifty is gone or I am.”

  CODY FOUND ME at about the time the place was filling up with cops after their eight-to-four shift. He slugged me in the arm hard enough to nearly knock me off my stool.

  “Fucking idiot,” he said. “Melissa’s worried to death. What’d you do, turn off your phone?”

  I left it in the car, I tried to say, but the words came out as gibberish.

  “I’ll give you a ride home,” he said. “We can come back and get your Jeep tomorrow.” He steered me out of the bar.

  “You’re a good friend,” I said, but it came out “You a goo fran.”

  “Shut up. We’ll grab some coffee on the way home.”

  “Bourbon.”

  “No bourbon.”

  “My head is splitting open.” My hay ish …

  We’d only been driving a short time when I gagged and belched.

  “Not in my car, knucklehead,” Cody said, whipping off the highway onto an exit so I could climb halfway out the window and throw up. It burned like acid coming up. I think I might have hit some of his door.

  “I been there,” he said, as I got back in and slumped in the seat. “It’s our own special corner of hell, ain’t it? But if anyone says it isn’t fun getting there, I know they’re lying because it is fun for a while.” Then: “Wipe your mouth.”

  “I HAD A GOOD DAY,” Cody said.

  I opened my eyes. It felt like I’d been sleeping for hours, but we were barely out of downtown.

  “What?”

  “I said I had a good day. A rare good day. With Brian’s call log. I think I’m getting somewhere.”

  It took a moment to register.

  “You need to quit feeling sorry for yourself,” he said. “You have to be alert and strong for Melissa these next few days. I hope you got this out of your system.”

  I nodded, afraid to talk and sound stupid.

  “I take that as a yes,” he said. “Now look, I’m going to have to be gone soon. I may be gone a couple of days, I’m not sure yet. But there’s something I need to follow up on, something in the call log. So if you and Melissa can’t find me, don’t worry. I’ll be back.”

  I tried to talk. Couldn’t.

  “Yeah, I know we’re running out of time,” he said.

  “SEE YOUR NEW FRIEND?” Cody asked as we drove down my street. I looked out the passenger window and saw three sheriff’s cars parked across from our house, each stacked on top of the other. No, not three. As I focused it turned out to be just one.

  “They’re making sure you and Melissa don’t take the baby and try to make a run for it. He’s been there all afternoon. Hey, did you do something today to piss off the judge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thought so. He’s calling in his chits with the sheriff.”

  MELISSA MET ME AT THE DOOR. I would have felt better if she’d scolded me, laid into me right there. Lord knows I deserved it.

  She helped me get my clothes off, helped me get into bed. The ceiling spun, and I ran to the bathroom. There was very little left to throw up. I took a shower and cleared my head a little, gargled and outright drank several gulps of the mouthwash.

  I was in bed when Melissa brought Angelina in to kiss me good night.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to both of them. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Get some sleep,” Melissa said, taking Angelina to her bedroom.

  THAT NIGHT, I had a dream. It was fused with alcohol. It was cinematic: A pair of headlights snapped on in a dark garage. The light filled with hundreds of large swirling moths. No, not moths—snowflakes. A deep-throated engine roared to life and the vehicle, its front grille looking like a mouthful of teeth, blasted out through a two-foot-high snowdrift. Snow exploded as the older-model pickup bucked drift after drift, going fast enough that it wouldn’t get bogged down in the heavy and deep blanket of white.

  Finally, the pickup swung onto a two-lane ribbon of black highway that was glazed with ice. The full moon lit up the snow in the meadows and sheened the ice on the road, but the pickup didn’t slow down. Gradually, as the defroster cleared the windshield, I could see the driver.

  He craned forward in his seat, leaning over the wheel. His eyes were dead as stones but there was a half smile on his face. On the seat of his truck was an arsenal of weapons: rifles, shotguns, Taser, bear spray, brass knuckles, leather saps, revolvers, semiautomatics.

  The two-lane eventually melded into the interstate, which finally turned south. The ice cleared. The vehicle picked up speed and soon it was rocketing down the interstate, bathed in moonlight. There were no other cars on the road. As the truck hurtled into the night, chunks of ice broke off beneath it and skittered across the highway like comets leaving snow trails.


  The heater was blasting, and the radio was up loud, alternating between archaic country and western heavy with steel guitars and a Southern preacher who spoke in a mesmerizing cadence while his congregation urged him on. The cab smelled of gasoline, sweat, and gun oil.

  At the rate the snow and ice was flying off the pickup, Jeter Hoyt figured it would be clean by the time he hit Denver.

  Wednesday, November 21

  Four Days to Go

  EIGHTEEN

  IT HAD BEEN A miserable day. I awoke with a monster of a headache and a terrible taste in my mouth. As I brushed my teeth, I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror and didn’t like what looked back. My eyes were red coals in dark pools of blue. I looked ten years older than I was, and felt fifty years older. The guilt I hadn’t felt the day before hammered me now, made me wonder why I’d drunk away a perfectly good afternoon feeling sorry for myself when I could have been home with my wife and daughter, could have been doing something.

  By the time I got dressed, it was ten in the morning. After all, there was no place to go.

  Melissa was playing with Angelina in the family room, making her giggle. When I saw the two of them there on the floor, I wondered how much I’d missed over the past year being at work. A lot, I knew. This was the place important things were happening, not at the office.

  “Da!” Angelina cried happily. I picked her up off the floor and kissed her soft fat cheek. Damn, how babies smelled good. Again, I wondered at what age would they stop smelling so sweet? And I thought, I may never find out.

  “I thought it best to let you sleep,” Melissa said, taking Angelina back. “You were completely out of it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Except at one point when you sat up in bed and yelled, ‘Here he comes!’ That was interesting.”

  “I was dreaming that Jeter Hoyt was on his way,” I said.

  Melissa said, “Let’s hope you weren’t prescient.” She shook her head and turned her attention back to Angelina.

  I padded to the window and parted the curtain.

  “He’s still there,” Melissa said. And he was: the black-and-white sheriff’s vehicle. I vaguely remembered him from the night before. “There’s another one around the corner in the alley.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said.

  “I wish I was. I saw him this morning when I took the garbage out. He’s a nice man named Morales.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I was thinking,” she said, “since you’re going to be home for a while if I couldn’t ask you to take out the garbage.”

  “Sure.”

  “I may have some other chores as well. I know you’re not at your best with time on your hands.”

  “True.”

  “And I don’t want you just hanging around driving me crazy,” she said.

  “I’ve never not had a job. I don’t think I know what to do.”

  “Look for another one, for starters. I left the employment section of the paper out for you. Who knows how quickly you can find something else? And I don’t need to tell you it needs to be fast.”

  “Who knows,” I echoed.

  “If we need to move, we need to move,” she said, bouncing Angelina on her knee, making her chuckle.

  I looked at the two of them and felt my eyes mist up. I turned away.

  AS I ATE cereal for breakfast, I watched them. I realized Melissa had taken no noticeable steps in preparation to turn our daughter over, even though it was just four days away. She’d packed no boxes, emptied no drawers. She behaved as if by denying the inevitability of it, the exchange wouldn’t take place. I conceded I was doing the same thing.

  Sheriff’s cars in front of the house and down the block in the mouth of the cul-de-sac. There was no way we could slip past them even if we intended to do that. And where would we go anyway? Would we live in our car with the baby, constantly looking over our shoulders?

  The obvious places for us to go were my parents’ ranch or her parents—her mother’s in Seattle or her father’s in Phoenix. But because they were obvious, they would be the first places the authorities would look.

  There was nowhere else I could think of. If we tried to live on the road, we’d burn through our meager bank account so quickly it would leave skid marks. My severance check and vacation/sick money wouldn’t be processed for weeks. By then, if we had run, the sheriff would follow the check to us, wherever we were. Our credit cards would max out fast. We had no other income.

  There was no way to sell the house for what little equity we had in it and use the money to escape. In the current Denver housing market, that could take months. I could get a few thousand from the Jeep and a couple thousand for Melissa’s car, but what would we run away in?

  Every damned option was bad. I felt like driving back to the cop bar and finding that friendly bartender and pasting down another fifty and starting over. I spent the rest of the day organizing the garage and the attic, generally staying out of Melissa’s way. I kept my eye out for things we could sell if we had to. I watched a napping Angelina when Melissa went to King Soopers. She reported that she asked the deputy down the street—she described him as a very nice man—if he intended to follow her there and back. He told her no, their orders were to follow only if all three of us were in the vehicle, if it looked like we were attempting to flee our home with Angelina.

  “Imagine that,” she said, shaking her head.

  WHEN THE PHONE RANG after dinner, I grabbed it because Melissa was changing Angelina in the living room.

  “It’s Jeter. It took me a while today to find that Appaloosa Club.”

  A rolling tremor went through me from the top of my head and my toes curled in my shoes.

  “You’re here?”

  “Got in around noon. Found a place to stay. Took a nap. Now that it’s dark out, I want to get to work. Damn—Denver got big on me. Used to be a glorified cow town. I don’t hardly know my way around anymore. How many people live here now?”

  “Two point four million.”

  He paused. “That’s twice more than all of Montana.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did all these folks come from?”

  “All over,” I said. “Where are you now?”

  “Some fleabag joint on West Colfax. At least this part of town hasn’t changed much. There are still hookers around, but I don’t think I’ve seen a white person since I’ve been here. It’s like some damned street in Tijuana.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I called Cody, and he didn’t pick up, so I’m calling you. I’m going to the club to night.”

  “Jeter, please, no.”

  “What, you worried about my fee now that Brian’s dead? Don’t. This is a favor to you boys and to that little girl of yours.”

  “Wait, don’t do anything until I get there …”

  He hung up.

  As I got my jacket, Melissa said, “Where are you going, Jack?”

  “I don’t think you want to know,” I said. “That was Jeter Hoyt on the telephone.”

  Which told her everything, and she turned away. I wondered if she felt as unclean and panicky as I did at that moment.

  AS I CLIMBED INTO my Jeep, I heard the motor start in the sheriff’s car across the street. For a moment I closed my eyes and stood there with the door open. If he followed me down to Zuni Street…

  I slammed the door and walked across the street. The deputy was young, fresh-faced, with brown hair and a blunt nose. He watched me approach with a practiced cop dead-eye stare, and I motioned for him to roll down his window. I saw him say something into his mike—probably notifying the cop down the block that I was there—and then his window descended halfway.

  “Hello, Deputy.”

  “That’s close enough,” he said.

  I stopped, put my hands up, and showed my palms to him. “I’m harmless.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Sanders. Billy Sande
rs.”

  “And Morales is the name of the deputy down the street? We might as well get to know you guys and be friends since we’re spending so much time together.”

  He smiled. “Your wife met Gary Morales already.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m going to go downtown and have a few beers, just like last night. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me?”

  “What?”

  “Why sit here all night? I’ll give you a ride with me, and that way you can keep an eye on me and have a couple of beers. I’d like the company because drinking alone is the shits. What do you say?”

  He grinned, not unfriendly. “That sounds pretty good, but I’m on duty until my replacement gets here.”

  “I can be back by then,” I offered.

  For a second he considered it, then, “Nah, no can do.”

  “Are you sure? I’m buying.”

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe tomorrow night?”

  He laughed. “Maybe.”

  “I’m going down to a place called Shelby’s. You know it?”

  “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “It’s on Eighteenth.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you there later, I guess. And if I drink too much, maybe I can bum a ride back from you?”

  He laughed. “I haven’t done all that much surveillance, but you two are the only people I’ve ever watched who were so damned nice. You’re making me suspicious, to tell you the truth.”

  “Sorry.”

  His window slid back up.

  I turned and went back to my Jeep and eased out of the driveway. I watched him in my rearview mirror. If he did decide to follow me, I’d just go to Shelby’s and read about Jeter in the Rocky Mountain News the next morning. In a way, I hoped Sanders would follow me. But, as I guessed, the sheriff’s car didn’t move. He didn’t want to be stuck downtown when his shift ended with the possibility of having to give me a ride all the way back, and he knew that without Melissa and Angelina with me, there was no point in following.