by John Hart
Officer Taylor laughed without humor.
“What?” Hunt asked.
“You’re a cop,” she said. “Everything is a tragedy.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, right.” Her tone was disbelieving. “Maybe.”
—
A hundred yards down the road, parked in a darkened drive, Johnny watched Hunt’s car pull away from his house. He dipped down as it sped past, but another one still sat in the place that his mother normally parked. Johnny had seen the cars just in time, Hunt’s sedan, the marked car with dark lights on the roof. He chewed on a fingernail, tasted dirt. All he wanted to do was check on his mom. Just once. But the cops …
Damn.
An old couple lived in the house where Johnny was parked. On warm days, the husband sat on the porch, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and watched his wife garden in a faded housedress that gapped in the front and showed more white skin and blue veins than Johnny thought a body should have. But they always waved and smiled when he passed on his bike, the woman with stained hands, the man with stained teeth.
Johnny climbed out of the car and closed the door. He heard rustling sounds and water dripping, the churr of frogs on trees and the hiss of tires as another car angled down the hill and splashed its lights against the low-slung cottage. Ducking, he slipped around the side of the house and began working his way through the backyards that stretched between the car and his own house. He moved past sheds that smelled of lawn clippings and rot, a trampoline that had rusted springs and a dangerous tilt. He ducked clotheslines, went over fences, and caught glimpses of neighbors he barely knew.
He slowed as he drew near his mother’s window. Her light burned yellow, and when he raised his head, he saw her sitting on the side of her bed. Tear-stained and splashed with mud, she sagged as if some vital string had been cut. She held a framed photograph, and her lips moved as she laid a finger on the glass and rolled her back to an unseen weight. But Johnny felt no sympathy. What leapt up in his chest was a sudden anger. She acted like Alyssa was gone for good, like there was no hope left.
She was so weak.
But when the photograph tilted, Johnny saw that it was not his sister’s photo that had wrecked his mother.
It was his father’s.
Johnny dropped below the sill. She’d burned them. Johnny remembered the day, a bright afternoon with fire in the backyard and the acrid smell of photographs charring down to nothing. He saw it like it was yesterday, how he’d stolen three of the photos from his mother’s hand and run crazy circles as she’d stumbled and wept and screamed at him to give them back. He knew where all three of those photos were, too: one in his sock drawer, two in the suitcase he kept for Alyssa.
The one his mother held was different. In it his father was young, with parted lips and flashing eyes. He wore a suit and tie. He looked like a movie star.
For an instant, the image blurred in his mind, then Johnny knuckled moisture from his right eye and moved through the shaggy yard to the tree line. He pushed hard into the darkness, trying to forget the sight of his mother with that photograph. It made him sad, and sadness made him weak.
Johnny spit in the dirt.
This was no night for weak.
A small trail took him under trees that scratched the night sky with a canopy so vast and dense it gave a whole new meaning to dark. Beyond the old growth was a tobacco farm gone to scrub. The tall trees disappeared. Poison ivy crawled over bare earth and milkweed rose taller than his head. A hundred yards in, he hopped a creek that ran swollen and brown. Briars took skin from his arms. When he came to the old tobacco barn, he stopped and listened. He’d once found two older boys inside smoking pot. That was months ago, but Johnny never forgot the chase they gave him. He put a hand on the barn. The squared-off logs were ridged by age, and most of the chinking had crumbled to ruin, but it was solid enough. Johnny put an eye to a gap and peered inside. Darkness. Silence. He made for the door.
Inside, he stepped on an old bucket and reached above the lintel. It took all the length of his arm, but he felt it there, just where he’d left it. The bag came out with a dragging sound and a rainfall of mouse droppings. It was blue and moldy, still stained reddish-brown along the bottom seams. Johnny breathed in the smell of it, the stink of dirt and bird and dead plants. He dropped to the ground outside and felt his breath go shaky. Johnny peered into the scrub and listened hard.
Then he pulled dry wood from the barn and built a fire.
A big one.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hunt pulled into David Wilson’s driveway as a high wind assaulted the last of the storm clouds. When he looked down he saw that small parts of the world had gone silver white: a puddle on the concrete drive, beads on the hood of his car. The street ended at the back of some faceless building that marked the edge of the college campus. Well-kept houses sheltered faculty families and a few students with parents wealthy enough to swing the rent. The lots were narrow, the trees tall and broad. Thin strips of green marked old joints in the concrete sidewalk. Weeds. Moss. The air smelled of growing things.
The rain that kept the neighbors in had also kept the police presence quiet, but Hunt saw signs that that would soon end. A man stood at the curb four houses down, a plastic bag hanging from his hand as he stared. Across the street, a cigarette sparked in the darkness. Hunt cursed under his breath and turned for the door. The house was a small Tudor with age-stained beams set into dark brick. A strip of grass separated it from its neighbor; a detached two-car garage filled the back corner. Hunt saw Yoakum through an undraped window and made for the door.
Inside, wood floors showed scars from long use and little care. Stairs rose to the right, the banister dark and slick. The kitchen was in the back, a glint of stainless steel and white linoleum that gleamed under hard lights. A uniformed cop nodded from the living room and Hunt nodded back. Another turned, and then a third. None of them looked Hunt in the eye, but he understood.
It all seemed very familiar.
David Wilson had been a professor, and the house felt like it: dark wood, exposed brick, a smell that was either fresh tobacco or old pot. Yoakum stepped in from the dining room and offered a smile that was perfunctory and meaningless. “I am not the bearer of glad tidings,” he said.
Hunt studied the interior of the house. “Start at the beginning.”
“The house belongs to the college. Wilson gets to live here as a perk. He’s been here for three years.”
“Nice perk.” Hunt reconsidered the house, noticed more quick glances from other cops.
Yoakum saw it, too, and lowered his voice. “They’re worried for you.”
“Worried?”
“Alyssa was a year ago, yesterday. No one has forgotten.”
Hunt looked around the room, eyes tight, mouth, too. Yoakum gave a shrug, trouble and worry in his eyes, too. “Just tell me about David Wilson,” Hunt said.
“He’s the head of the biology department. Well respected, as far as I can tell. Widely published. Kids admire him. Administration admires him, too.”
“You made it plain to the college that Wilson’s not a suspect? I don’t want to ruin a good man’s reputation for no reason.”
“Material witness, I told them. Saw something that got him killed.”
“Good. Tell me what else you know about David Wilson.”
“You can start with this.”
Yoakum crossed an oriental rug that was probably older than the house. He led Hunt to a wall that held a number of framed photographs, each of which showed basically the same thing: David Wilson with a different beautiful woman. “Bachelor?” Hunt asked.
“You tell me. Engine parts on the dining room table. Steak and beer in the fridge, and not much else. Seventeen condoms in the drawer of the bedside table.”
“You counted?”
Yoakum shrugged. “It’s my brand.”
“Ah, humor.”
“Who’s joking?”
“Any indication of w
here or how he might have crossed paths with Tiffany Shore?”
“If there’s a great big clue in this house somewhere, I haven’t discovered it yet. If he really did find the kid, I’m guessing it was by accident.”
“Alright,” Hunt said. “Let’s break it down. We know that he’s lived here for three years. He’s athletic, well paid, and smart.”
“Athletic?”
“The ME thinks he may have been a rock climber.”
“Smart man, that Trenton Moore.”
“Yeah?”
“Come with me,” Yoakum said, and threaded his way through the kitchen to a narrow door at the back of the house. He opened it and warm air gushed in. “Garage is through the backyard.”
They stepped out onto wet grass. A privacy fence shielded much of the yard, and the garage loomed, square and blunt, at the far corner. Made from the same brick as the house, it was wide enough to hold at least two cars. Yoakum entered first and flicked on the lights. “Check it out.”
Rafters spanned a gulf beneath the peaked roof. Oil stained a dull cement floor. Two of the walls were made from peg boards, and on the pegs hung all kinds of climbing gear: coils of rope, carabineers, pitons, headlamps, and helmets.
“I’d say he was a climber.”
“With some stupid-looking shoes,” Yoakum said, and Hunt turned.
The shoes were ankle high, leather boots with smooth, black rubber soles that curved up the front and sides. Three pairs hung from different pegs. Hunt lifted a pair. “Friction shoes,” he said. “They’re good on stone.”
Yoakum pointed at the rafters. “Guy’s not scared of water, either.”
“Kayaks.” Hunt pointed to the longest of the kayaks. “That’s oceangoing.” He pointed to the short one. “That’s river.”
“There’s no car registered in his name,” Yoakum said.
“But oil stains on the floor.” Hunt lifted a set of keys from a nail by the door: black plastic at the fat end. “Spare set, I’m guessing. Toyota.” He looked at tire marks on the concrete. “Long wheel base. Maybe a truck or a Land Cruiser. Check with the college. Maybe it’s registered to the biology department.”
“We did find a trailer registered to David Wilson.”
“For his dirt bike, probably. The one he was riding when he was killed wasn’t street legal, so he probably took it out on a trailer. What he was doing out in the most forbidding corner of the county is the question. What he was doing and where he was doing it.”
They left the garage and pulled the door shut, started back across the yard. “It’s wild country up there. Lot of woods. Lot of trails.”
“Good place to dirt bike.”
“You think his car is still out there somewhere?” Yoakum asked.
They mounted steps to the back door, went inside and passed through the kitchen. “It has to be.” Hunt pictured the county in his mind. They were a hundred miles from the state capital, sixty from the coast. There was money in town: industry, tourists, golf; but the north country was wild, riddled with swamps and narrow gorges, deep woods and spines of granite. If David Wilson was dirt biking up that way, then his car could be anywhere: back roads, unmapped trails, fields. Anywhere. “We need some designated units up there.” Hunt ran some numbers in his head. “Make it four patrol cars. Get them up there now.”
“It’s pretty dark.”
“Now,” Hunt said. “And get the trailer’s plate number to Highway Patrol.”
Yoakum snapped his fingers and a uniformed officer materialized. “Make sure the state police have Wilson’s plate. Tell them it’s related to the Shore case. They already have the Amber Alert.” The cop disappeared to make the call. Yoakum turned back to Hunt. “Now what?”
Hunt turned a slow circle, studied the shots of David Wilson with his collection of pretty females. “Bedroom. Basement. Attic. Show me everything.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Levi moved carefully on the mud and slick rocks. The river tossed bits of light that reminded him of something from when he was a boy. There was a rhythm, a pattern, like a kaleidoscope his daddy gave him the year before the cancer took him. The trail bent to high ground and Levi used his free hand to pull on roots and saplings to get him up the slick clay. He dug in the edges of his shoes for traction. When he reached the high, flat stretch, he stopped to catch his breath; and when he started again, the river lights winked out behind the willows and the ash, the sweet gums and the long-fingered pines. It went truly dark, and that’s when he saw the faces. He saw his wife laughing at him and then suddenly not, her face gone reddish black and wet, almost by itself. He saw the man who was with her, and how his face went wrong, too, all red and crooked and flat on one side.
And the sounds.
Levi tried to stop thinking; he wanted to wash the images out of his head, pump water in one ear and flush it, dirty, out the other. He wanted to be empty, wanted to make room for when God spoke. He was happy then, even if it was just one word repeated over and over. Even when it was just a name that rang in his head like a church bell.
Sofia.
Levi heard it again.
Her name.
He walked on and felt warm water on his face. It took a mile for him to understand that he was crying. He didn’t care. Nobody could see him out here, not his wife or his neighbors, none of the ones that made jokes when people said things he didn’t understand, or laughed at how he went quiet when he found dead animals on the roadside. So he let the tears come. He listened for God, and let the tears run hot down his ruined face.
He tried to remember the last night he’d slept, but could not. The week behind him was a colored string of blurred images. Digging in the dirt. Walking.
That thing he done …
That thing.
Levi closed his eyes, so tired; and when his foot went out from under him, he fell on the slick clay. He landed on his back and slid down the bank, over stones that tore deep and cut. He struck his head on something hard, saw a burst of light, and felt pain explode in his side. It stabbed through him, horrible and jagged and raw. He felt something break, a violent tug, and realized that his box was gone. His arms flailed, touched plastic once and felt it glide away.
It was in the river.
God almighty, it was gone in the dark.
Levi stared out at black water and pinprick lights. His big hands clenched.
Levi couldn’t swim.
He worried about that for a second, but was in the water even before God told him to jump. He landed, legs spread, arms out, and felt dirty water push into his mouth. He came up spitting, then went down again, his hands loud on the river, water fast and cold between his fingers. He struggled and choked and feared he would die, then found that he could stand in water that rose to his chest. So he stood and beat his way downriver, tore through bits of light until he found his package spinning idly behind a fallen tree.
He fought it to shore, crawled up the bank, and ignored the pain that tried to cripple him. He thought again of his wife.
She shouldn’t have done the things she done.
He wrapped himself around the package. Pain all in him. Something not right in his body.
She shouldn’t have done it.
Eventually, Levi slept, still curled around the package, moaning as his giant limbs twitched.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Nothing.” Hunt stood in the low basement at David Wilson’s house. John Yoakum slouched beside him. Two bulbs hung from rust-stained sockets screwed into bare floor joists; a black furnace sat cold and still in the far corner. Hunt scuffed one foot on the floor and a puff of mold and dust rose and then settled. The room smelled of earth and damp concrete.
“What did you expect?” Yoakum asked.
Hunt looked into the crawl space that ran under the living room at the back of the house. “A lucky break. For once.”
“No such thing as luck, good or bad.”
“Tell that to Tiffany.”
Fifteen hours had now passed
since some unknown individual had jerked the girl into his car, and they were no closer to finding her. They’d been over every inch of the house and grounds with nothing to show for it. Hunt beat one palm on the bare wood of the basement stairs, and dust drifted down. “I have to check on my son,” Hunt said. “I forgot to tell him I’d be late.”
“Just call him.”
Hunt shook his head. “He won’t answer.”
“That bad?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What do you want me to do?” Yoakum asked.
Hunt gestured up the stairs. “Clean it up. Close it down. I’ll meet you at the station in half an hour.”
“And when we’re there?”
“We work the angles. We pray for some luck.” Hunt put a finger in Yoakum’s face. “And don’t you say it.”
Yoakum raised his hands. “What?”
“Not one damn word.”
—
Outside, Hunt found a crowd of neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. Two uniformed officers kept them at bay, but he had to push through to get to his car. He was almost there when a thin, angry-looking man asked: “Is this about Tiffany Shore?” He raised his voice. “No one will tell us anything.” Hunt moved past him, and the man pointed at Wilson’s house, spoke even louder. “Is that man involved?”
Hunt almost stopped, then didn’t.
Nothing he could say would make it better.
In the car, he turned the air on high and eased away from the crowd. He needed to go home, check on his son, throw some water on his face, but he found himself skirting the edge of town, then looking down the long, fast drop to Katherine Merrimon’s house. Officer Taylor opened the door before he could knock. Her features were drawn, lips pressed tight. Hunt noticed that her hand rested on the holstered weapon. She relaxed when she saw who it was, then stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind her.
