by M K Dymock
Daniel would’ve acquiesced to her by now, but Dale didn’t. “Come back in a few months, and I’ll sell you the best I have. But not now.”
“My daughter is missing!” she yelled. “Not in a few months, now.”
He tried to take her arm, but at this closeness she retreated. “Please, Miss Dawson—Elizabeth.”
She whirled around to the door only to face her daughter’s smiling face gracing a missing poster. She ripped the flyer off the door and flung it at Dale. “Posting flyers isn’t going to do crap if someone took her. You’re no help.”
She dropped the keys twice as she fumbled for the button to unlock her car. Once she did, she hit the panic button by mistake. The alarm pealed out its anger. A few shoppers walked by, ignoring both her and the sound. Once in, she pushed the key too far back in the ignition in the Outback until the screeching sound warned her. Before she could make a second attempt, Dale opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat beside her.
Before she could speak, he held out a small pistol. She reached for it. “Thanks.”
He yanked it back before she could touch it. “You don’t need it for protection, because right now you don’t care about your safety. And you don’t need it to stop people from stealing your valuables, because the only thing you value has already been stolen.” Dale looked her right in the eye. “If you want this gun, I come with it. What do you need it for?”
She clenched the steering wheel. “A kid was in the store the day I lost her, harassing her. The sheriff hasn’t found him, but I don’t think he tried that hard. And I thought he might be more apt to talk to me.”
“Who’s the kid?”
“Gauge Ferguson. You know him?”
“I know the family. They’re all a bit off. Oldest boy threw a rock through a window because I wouldn’t sell him a gun. Busted it through, good thing I got the bars.”
“Yeah, I hear he likes to bust windows.”
“You’re going to hurt him?”
The matter-of-fact way Dale asked the question showed an understanding that surprised her. “No, I only want the gun in case he gets violent. Can I have it now?” Elizabeth didn’t know if she lied or spoke truth. Guess it depended on the condition she found her daughter in.
“No, but I’m going with you.”
The rain pounded again, but this storm only lasted a half hour or so. The “or so” was an estimate, as Keen had lost all sense of time with the clouds as thick as oatmeal. What day was it, Friday already? She gave up counting; it only depressed her.
She zipped up the sleeping bag after she crawled out. Despite the rough night, it looked relatively new. Hadn’t it or one just like it hung in the store this last summer?
She closed her eyes and pictured the campsite as she’d come upon it the evening before. The memories were fuzzy in the day’s light. The tent had held two sleeping bags. Was there anything else? No clothes, no shoes, no flashlights, not even a pack of cards had spilled across the tent floor. Just two new sleeping bags inviting her to crawl in, zip herself up.
And the cooler filled with food. Not the kind of food you’d expect to find at a camp. Only a few sandwiches already made, as if they waited for her.
The water bottles had been sealed, but the sandwiches were homemade. A few bites from one, and she’d spent the last several hours hurling. The cooler didn’t seem urgent to find anymore. If it wasn’t for the flood, would her pursuer have found her asleep in a sleeping bag?
How did he know she would be there, that she would find the tent? No, he was long gone, had to be, and she was losing it. The hills and cliffs surrounded her as if they were squeezing in closer, boxing her in. Was he watching her now? Every direction she went, he was already there.
Her body would never be found. Her parents would search their whole lives, never knowing, always wondering.
The Sunday before, Keen called Grace, unsure of who else to talk to about the file she’d found. Grace had acted as a sort-of big sister. “I’m sure the cash is coming from your dad’s guiding or the fitness classes your mom’s been holding,” Grace had said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why wouldn’t they tell me? I’m so sick of them keeping stuff from me.” She hated the petulant tone coming out of her mouth.
Grace said, “Honestly, I don’t think your mom wants to feel like you have to take care of the store. She wants you to have choices.”
Keen shook her head as though Grace could see through the phone. “No, she wants to make the choices for me.”
Grace laughed. “I know it feels that way. Don’t let this worry you; focus on school.” Her tone turned serious. “Your mother loves you like breathing; both are necessary to her survival.”
“Enough,” Keen said out loud to the dark sky. She would return to the trough and find the four-wheeler trail. She would follow it as long as she could, as long as her body held out. She would not die in the middle of nowhere if she could help it.
The dry-heaves had emptied her gut, stopping nausea but returning hunger. The hunger pangs had become such a part of her, she struggled to remember what warm food tasted like. As she walked, Keen nibbled on different weeds, but they did little to alleviate the searing hunger. She chewed on rocks between stalks of grass.
After forcing down one particularly fibrous plant, she said, “Moo, moo.” Keen laughed at her joke. “What? It’s funny.”
If it came to it, she would face him instead of running. She kept one hand clenching the walking stick—her only weapon.
Sometime in the afternoon, the clouds exploded. They didn’t look thick enough for more than a few drops, but the monsoon refused to slow. By the time Keen found a dry enough hole to crawl into, the water had seeped through her sleeping bag, through her very skin.
This time the shivering didn’t stop.
31
The Fergusons lived way out west in an area that grew more rocks than grass. As Elizabeth and Dale pulled into the unpaved driveway, three or four heeler dogs chased them down the dirt road, yapping at their tires. A man stood on the porch, carrying a beer and yelling something indistinguishable over the car’s engine. The dogs fled to the back of the house. The dust from their drive in settled on Elizabeth and Dale as they stepped out of the car.
At the sight of Dale, the man yelled out, “What you doing, you old crook, selling guns house-to-house now?” The man’s smile showed half a mouth of missing teeth with the remaining browned out.
Elizabeth was relieved she’d brought someone who seemed to know the family.
“I was hoping to talk to your son,” Dale said.
The old man moved closer to her, along with one of the dogs who’d been sitting in his shade. He stared at her, but not with an appreciating gaze. She glanced down to see what she even wore. Jeans, hiking boots, and a T-shirt, all of which she might’ve worn the day before, or the day before that.
“Do I know you?” Gauge’s father asked.
“No, but my daughter’s gone missing, and I’m trying to talk to everyone who saw her before she disappeared.”
He spat out a wad of something into the hard-packed dirt. “I don’t think Gauge spends a lot of time around little kids.”
“She’s not a little kid. She’s twenty and nobody’s seen her since Monday.”
“Monday? What’s today, Thursday?” She didn’t correct him. “I once didn’t see Colt, my oldest, for a few months when he was eighteen.” The man burst out laughing. “Turned out he was in jail, and I was too drunk to notice.”
As much as Elizabeth found Gauge off-putting, this man took it to a whole new level. She had some sympathy to anyone this man sired, but pushed that feeling down.
“You check the jails for yours? ’Course, at twenty you’d be better off checking the beds of some of the boys around.” He laughed at his own joke again. “Unless she’s a little homely. If looks run in the family, that is.”
Elizabeth now understood why Dale hadn’t given her a gun. She’d shoot him; she’
d point the gun and squeeze off bullet after bullet until this jackass’s smile froze in death. But as much as she desired clawing his face into bleeding flesh, she needed him to get to the son.
Dale moved around the front of the car to be next to her as if he sensed her thoughts. “You’re probably right, but we still want to talk to Gauge if we can.”
“Out of luck. He’s not here.”
“Could you tell us—”
“Nope.” Ferguson went inside, slamming the front door on them and catching the paws of a dog who tried to follow him. It yelped in protest but the door didn’t budge.
“Ferguson!” Dale yelled.
“Let him go,” Elizabeth said. “I know some places we can look. I’ll find him.”
32
Friday Afternoon
When Gauge had hauled for them, Elizabeth had driven out the supplies to where he kept his horses. She dropped off the stuff without the boy ever saying anything beyond a nod.
A single dirt road with yellowing grass between the tire ruts led them to a small lean-to with a few stalls. Rain dripped off the aspens surrounding the road. The sun didn’t make it through the changing leaves. All she knew about the area was what Daniel had told her: Gauge rented it to board his horses there. The barn wasn’t more than a shed, offering little protection and shade to the two horses it housed. One of those horses, a nondescript sorrel, was tied up in front with a man bent over, filing the hooves.
She asked Dale to stay in the car—didn’t want to spook the boy.
The horses, by all appearances, were the most well-kept creatures on the land. Their coats were shiny and no ribs showed through. The stretch of a boy who took care of them could boast no such thing. The jeans he wore were held by a belt, not a waistband, and the hems had worn off from dragging on the ground. He stood at their approach and seemed to recognize Elizabeth. His stare went to the ground, and he gripped the iron file.
“Gauge?” she said.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Dawson.”
She swallowed, but no saliva remained in her mouth. “Sorry for what?” Her voice barely audible.
He looked up a few inches from the ground. “I wasn’t at the search today.” He glanced at the horse beside him, who snorted, her breath hovering in the cold air. “Honey here threw a shoe yesterday so I thought I’d replace it this morning before I went out, but then Mr. Croft called and said some of his sheep broke through a fence along the road and he wanted me to fix it.” He said this in a rush of words followed by a blush before he dropped his gaze again.
“No, I’m not here about the search; that was cancelled anyhow. I just remembered you talking to my daughter on Monday and thought she might’ve told you something.”
“About where she was going?” He shook his head. “No.” He drew a circle with the heel of his boot in the dirt.
Elizabeth softened her voice. The more you pushed a reticent person, the more they receded. She understood that better than anyone. “She was upset on Monday. I guess you wouldn’t know why?”
“She was upset?” The sorrel stomped a foot, sending a few horseflies into the air.
“I saw her crying later.” The crying part was a bit of an exaggeration. Keen’s tears had been few.
“I thought I was helping.”
“You meant well, I’m sure.”
“Did I upset her bad?”
Elizabeth wanted to shake answers out of him and struggled to keep the frustration out of her voice. “A little. What happened?”
“I told her I seen Jake kissing a girl.” He stood up to look over the horse’s back. “But she said she already knew.”
“You know Jake?”
“Just from Keen.”
“So you were friends with her?”
He went around to curry the other side of the horse.
“Gauge?”
“I guess we was friends.”
It took two calls to reach all of Keen’s close friends, and both those girls were gone more than around this summer. Elizabeth wondered if her daughter, who once brought home a snake because it looked lonely, hadn’t made another odd friend. The skinny boy wasn’t any taller than Keen and seemed as bashful. “She was friends with you?”
He flinched at her unintended emphasis of “you” and dropped down to brush lower on the horse, disappearing out of sight. “I was a better friend than Jacob,” was his muffled response.
Keen had always been incapable of keeping a secret from her parents. Her father long since stopped telling her what he bought Elizabeth for her birthday. Keen blurted it out more often than not. It seemed more likely that Gauge had developed an infatuation than a friendship. The only thing she could think of to get to the truth was to make a friend herself.
“I appreciate you participating with the search. If you can think of anything, it would help.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then shut it and nodded in agreement, apparently out of words for the day.
Elizabeth moved slowly toward the boy, keeping the horse between them. She ran a hand down the rump of the mare while Gauge moved to file the front foot. “I need her home, Gauge. She needs to be home.”
He stood and matched her gaze as long as he could. “I’ll bring her home.”
Something about him told her he meant it. “Gauge,” she said. “Did you hurt my daughter?” He took a step back. “You need to tell me now before it gets worse.”
He whirled his head around as if looking for an escape. “I wouldn’t … no, I …”
She took a step forward. “Gauge.”
“I wouldn’t hurt Keen. I want to save her.”
“So do I.” But Elizabeth was running out of places to look.
33
Friday Evening
Blake went over Elizabeth’s list of everyone Keen had been in contact with, starting with a school roommate texting about homework and parties. His deputies had reached out to everyone on the list except one. Blake saved that one for himself, in person.
Saturday night before Labor Day, Keen met with Cliff Weaver, the town auditor. Elizabeth said Keen had interned part-time with him during the summer. He and Weaver were neighbors of sorts, and he stopped on his way home.
Cliff’s house was up in Skyline, Blake’s neighborhood. It was the only neighborhood that bordered the ski resort. Houses on the left side of the winding lane up the mountain cost twice as much as houses on the right. Left meant ski in/ski out access, and right meant a hike. Cliff’s house, along with the mayor’s, was on the left. Blake’s lots, both from his father-in-law, were on the right side. One for a home and one to sell once prices went up. And the mayor assured him they would go up. Building had halted at the recession and still hadn’t recovered.
Everyone on city council chased after the magical mirage of building an airport in the valley. They figured all that stood in the way of Lost Gorge being a destination resort town was easier access. Only one problem—where would a backwater town find that kind of money? Investors had shied away after the housing bubble, never to return. Now the mayor and everyone else on Skyline dug holes on a dry mine.
He drove through what residents called the gates, though right now it was just a stone arch. Gates would come when they actually had more than a handful of houses. The road climbed a thousand feet in less than a mile.
Cliff had been the neighborhood’s only new resident in three years. In another time and place, he’d been the CEO of a software company, which sold for millions little over a year ago. He officially retired at forty-five but served as town auditor. Blake pulled into Cliff’s stone house with sprinklers running on freshly laid sod. His knock was answered after a few minutes, and Cliff ushered him into the study, where he sat him under a giant moose head. The moose had probably died from old age and been purchased by the interior designer.
Cliff, who Blake sat across from, looked like a man trying not to look like a software nerd. The flannel shirt didn’t hide the slight pudginess and awkwardness of a man used
to being inside.
“You wanted to talk about the Dawson girl?” Cliff asked.
“Yeah, her mother said that she helped you Saturday night with some accounting.”
“Yes, she came up about eight.”
A soft knock at the door accompanied a woman in her young twenties, wearing a low-cut tank and carrying a few mugs. “Brought you boys some coffee.”
Blake stood and took the mugs from her. “Thank you.” Interacting with Cliff’s wife was like talking to a child playing house. He wondered who would tire of the game first: her or Cliff. If there was no prenup, his money was on her. She left after depositing the mugs.
“What did you need Keen’s help with? Seems like she would be the one who would need your help.”
The leather chair squeaked as Cliff leaned back in it, crossing his legs. “She does, or at least she did. She’s majoring in business and interned for the city, but she told me she wasn’t getting much actual business experience, so I told her I could use her help. I just had her balancing sheets, making sure everything added up right.”
Blake set his coffee mug on the table. “And did it?”
“Did what?”
“Everything add up all right?”
“Everything always does.” He smiled.
Blake checked to make sure the door was shut. “Not always, Cliff. You know that.”
Cliff’s tone changed from a southern breeze to a blue northern. “From where I sit, everything adds up just fine.” The outdoorsman shed his persona to the CEO and Blake smirked at his win. Better that than the BS.
“Did everything add up fine for Keen, or did she notice something?”
Cliff glanced briefly out the two-story picture window. When he looked back at Blake, the good-ole-boy smile returned. “She just added some sheets together, nothing big. Your father-in-law went over them later, so you ought to ask him about it.” Cliff stood and Blake followed his lead. “Now you tell the Dawsons if they need anything to give us a call.”
