“Something I can do for you?” she called softly as she stubbed out a cigarette on the wooden floor of the porch. The aroma of marijuana was unmistakable.
“Hello,” Kendra called back. “Are you one of the ladies who owns this ranch?”
“Yes,” she responded somewhat warily.
“I’m Kendra Smith.” She stopped at the bottom step, still holding Adam’s hand. “My aunt, Sierra, owned this ranch at one time.”
“If you’ve come to try to take it away from us, we’ll fight you. We’ll all fight you.” The woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and she stood. Her voice began to rise shrilly. “It was all legal. There was a will. Sierra wanted us to have—”
“Whoa, I’m not here to take anything from you. I just came to talk, that’s all.”
“Talk?” Dirty fingers pulled nervously at a long strand of unkempt brown hair.
“Yes. That’s all. I’m just looking for some information.”
“Information about what?”
“Years ago, my brother died out here, along with my cousin, and I was hoping to speak with someone who was living here at the time. Were you living here then, when Sierra’s son and my brother were lost?”
“You’re Ian’s sister?” The woman’s eyebrows raised slightly.
Kendra nodded. “Yes.”
“I was here then. I remember Ian.” She lowered herself back into the chair. “He was a beautiful boy. Spoiled, though. He had too much. He didn’t like to share. He was mean sometimes.”
“Mean to whom?” Kendra’s brows knit closely. Ian had been a handful, true, but mean?
“To Zach. To some of the other kids. He liked to bully.”
“What’s your name?” Kendra asked.
“Emmy Moss.”
“Are you Christopher Moss’s mother?”
“I am.”
“How is your son?” Kendra sat on the top step and looked up at the woman, who looked barely old enough to have had a child who would be well into his teens by now.
“He’s the same. Same as he was. Same as he’s been.” She rocked herself back and forth.
“Do you visit him often?” Kendra leaned back against the railing, and Adam stepped aside as if to step out of the picture. Kendra was doing fine on her own for now.
“No.” Emmy picked at a fingernail. “It makes me too sad to go. He never says anything but that same garble and I never know what it means. I can’t stand it.”
“It must be very difficult for you.”
“Chrissy has always been difficult for me. They said it was because . . . because I used to drink a lot. Before he was born. But whatever, he was never right.”
“My aunt told my mother that the day the boys, Ian and Zach, disappeared, Christopher followed behind them. Do you think they knew that he was following?”
Emmy shrugged. “Maybe. He always was trailing on behind the other kids. He just wanted to be noticed. Just wanted to be included.”
“Did you see them leave that day?”
“I was sitting right here when they came outside.” She nodded. “Zach and Ian. They had backpacks and some food in a small cooler. You have to keep your stuff cool out here, you know, otherwise things spoil so quickly with the heat.”
“Did you see them leave, Emmy?”
“No. I went back inside to make breakfast for Sierra. She always let me cook her breakfast for her. She liked the way I cooked.”
“I guess you miss her.” Adam sat down on the step next to Kendra.
“Sure. She was more like a sister than a friend. She let me live here, let me keep the ranch. Me and Rosie and Sarah. We were like sisters, the four of us . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“Did the boys mention to you where they were going that morning?”
“Someplace out toward the Chiricahuas.” Emmy pointed to the mountains in the distance, beyond the barn. “They were going to camp for a few days.”
“Did Sierra know how far they were going to go?”
“Sure. What difference did it make?”
Because when they ran into trouble, they were too far away to get help, that’s what difference it made, Kendra wanted to shout.
“So they set out that way . . .” Kendra gritted her teeth, and pointed in the direction of the mountains, “and then Christopher followed?”
“A few minutes later.” Emmy shook her head. “It was a few minutes later that Chrissy left. He never went off on his own, Chrissy didn’t. Never left the ranch by himself. He didn’t know his way around. Just couldn’t remember things well. That’s why he followed the other boys.”
“Who else saw the boys leave? Who else was out here that morning?”
“Just me.”
“Emmy, would it be all right with you if we went to see Christopher?” Adam asked.
“He won’t know you’re there, chances are.”
“We’d like your permission to stop by anyway,” Adam said.
“Sure, whatever.” Emmy shrugged.
“Thanks for your time, Emmy.” Kendra rose and dusted off the back of her khakis.
“You want to wait around to see Sarah and Rose? They sleep late sometimes. . . .”
“Not this time, I’m afraid.”
“Some other time, then.” Emmy continued to twist the long tangle of dark hair and began to rock again.
“Bye,” Kendra waved, suddenly anxious to leave. She barely said a word until they were beyond the gates and in the car.
“Wow,” she said, “the sixties are alive and well outside of Chaco, Arizona.”
“What a way to spend your life.” Adam shook his head as he started up the car. “Getting high on your front porch and watching the buzzards fly by.”
“She was pretty much out there, wasn’t she?” Kendra turned sideways in her seat and rested her arms on the window.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about how desolate it is out here. What if everyone believed that the boys went in one direction, and they actually went in another? I mean, with spaced-out Emmy as the only witness, how reliable was the information? Maybe they didn’t search for them in the right place.”
“Kendra, you read the reports last night and this morning. This place was swarming with law enforcement agents and volunteers, twenty miles in every direction. There wasn’t a sign of either of them.”
“But they didn’t start looking until the boys had been gone for almost two days. They could have walked more than twenty miles in two days, Adam.”
“From what I read in the files, those hills were scoured. But we can always go over the files again with Sheriff Gamble. Maybe there’s something we missed.”
“Maybe.”
Kendra leaned closer to the window to rest her chin on her arms. “The ranch looks smaller, shabbier. When I was here before, there were more people. More activity. It’s so quiet out here now.”
“Maybe it was your aunt who kept things moving.”
“No doubt. Mom always said she was a lightning rod, that things always happened when she was around.” Kendra looked back at the hills as Adam started the car. “Strange to think that she died almost a full year before Mom and that no one called us.”
“Do you think it would have occurred to Emmy?”
“I don’t think there’s much that occurs to Emmy,” she said dryly.
“Shall we see if her son has anything meaningful to add?”
“To Benson.” She pointed straight ahead. “But I doubt Christopher will be of any more help than his mother was.”
It appeared that Christopher would be no help at all.
The small private hospital that Christopher Moss called home sat at the edge of the desert. Out front, the pink blooms of the barrel cactus were just beginning to open. Hummingbirds darted around the feeders that hung from the low branches of the cottonwoods. The hospital was mission style, with arches and tiles set into the stucco walls. The grounds were manicured and neat. The overwhelming impression was of money, exclu
sivity.
“I wonder if my aunt paid for this,” Kendra said in a low voice as she and Adam approached the courtyard.
“Emmy didn’t appear to be a lady of means.”
“It would have been good use of Sierra’s money,” Kendra told him, thinking of some of the ways she was putting the Smith money to work. Father Tim’s Mission was only one beneficiary. “Better to take care of Christopher than to have Emmy and her gang smoke it away. Or worse.”
The hospital was cool inside, the staff cordial. Kendra and Adam were taken to Christopher’s room by a young male orderly who had a buzz cut, several tattoos, and a friendly manner.
“Chrissy, you have some company,” the orderly announced as he led the visitors into the room. He opened the drapes to let in the scenery, then pointed to a chair next to the window.
The man in the chair appeared to be in his thirties, though Kendra and Adam were well aware that he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His pale hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail held with a red rubber band. He wore a shirt that buttoned down the front and cotton pants with a drawstring at the waist of the same color blue as the shirt. He stared out the window, and it wasn’t until Kendra spoke that his eyes shifted to look at her face, though his head never moved. His left hand moved to one of the buttons on his shirt, which he began to stroke, holding it between his thumb and his index finger.
“Hi, Christopher,” Kendra said as she took a few steps forward, then stopped. “Is it okay if I sit down in the chair there, next to you?”
“He doesn’t talk,” the orderly said, as if Christopher was deaf as well as mute. “He never talks. Well, rarely, anyway. Sometimes you can get him to write or draw pictures, but that’s all.”
“Christopher, my name is Kendra. I’m Ian’s sister. Do you remember Ian?”
Christopher looked past her, to some place beyond the window.
“We saw your mother today, Christopher. Emmy. We went to see her at the ranch. Do you remember the ranch? You used to live there.”
Nothing, not so much as the blink of an eye.
“Do you remember Zach? Zach was my cousin. You lived on the ranch with him, with your mother, Emmy, and Zach’s mother, Sierra, and lots of other people. Do you remember Zach?”
Christopher’s head turned slightly but still, he did not look at her face. Kendra continued to chat with him in a low, soothing voice, hoping that something would reach him, but nothing appeared to have gotten through. He simply stared out the window.
“I guess that’s that.” She looked up at Adam, still speaking softly.
“What were you hoping for?” he asked.
Kendra shrugged. “I have no idea what I thought I’d find.”
She turned back to Christopher and took his hands in her own, patting them gently. “You take care, Christopher. Maybe we’ll get to see you again before we leave Arizona.”
Kendra quietly returned her chair to its spot against the wall, and turned to leave.
“Be . . . ca . . . ca . . .” The voice, little more than a whisper, was raspy from disuse.
“What?” Stunned that he’d spoken, she turned back to Christopher. “What did you say?”
“Be . . . ca . . . ca . . .” he stuttered.
“Because? Because what?” She knelt in front of him, and found that fat tears were pooling in the corners of his eyes. “Because what, Christopher?”
“Be . . . ca . . . ca . . .” he repeated, his eyes not meeting hers.
She quickly searched her handbag for her Daytimer, where she knew she’d find at least a small piece of paper and a pen. She placed the paper in front of Christopher and held out the pen. When he made no move to take it, she put it in his hand, wrapping his fingers around it.
“Here, Christopher. Can you write it for me? Whatever it is you’re trying to tell us, can you write it for me?”
Christopher Moss stared for long minutes at the pen before his gaze moved slowly to the paper on the table, then back to the pen. Kendra had all but given up hope that he’d use them, when Christopher moved the pen to the paper and began to write. When he dropped the pen, Kendra picked it up and handed it back to him, but his gaze had changed, as if he was no longer aware of her presence.
Kendra slipped the pen into her pocket and lifted the paper.
BE CAUS
“What in the devil do you suppose that means?” Adam whispered.
Kendra shook her head and reached behind Christopher to grab a few tissues from the box that sat on the windowsill. She wiped his face dry of tears, then tucked the paper into her purse.
“Let’s see if this means anything to Sheriff Gamble.” Kendra tossed the tissues into the trash. “Thank you, Christopher. I know this means something important to you. We’ll do our best to try to figure out what.”
“So, how’d you make out?” Cole Gamble asked when Adam and Kendra walked into his office later that afternoon. “Was Christopher able to tell you something you didn’t already know?”
“We don’t know,” Adam told him.
Kendra took out the narrow sheet of paper and laid it on the desk in front of the sheriff.
“This is what we have. Any idea what it might mean?”
Gamble picked up the paper and studied it.
“Because? Is that what he was trying to write?” Gamble shook his head. “Because what?”
“No clue,” Kendra told him. “I told him that we’d seen his mother at the ranch this morning—”
“How’d that go, by the way?” the sheriff interrupted to ask.
“Okay, I guess. Emmy’s not a font of credible information. She seemed more concerned with the rhythm of her rocker than anything else,” Kendra told him.
“Sad but true.” Gamble nodded. “Sorry. You were saying?”
“Just that I was telling Christopher about seeing his mother, and talking about the ranch and Zach and Ian, and he started crying and he said something that sounded like this. Be . . . ca . . . ca.” She mimicked the sound the boy had made. “I gave him the paper and pen and asked him to write down what he was trying to say, and that’s what he wrote. It could be because . . . but that doesn’t really mean anything by itself.”
“I’d like to make a copy of that paper, if I could. Maybe it will mean something to someone.”
Kendra handed over the paper, waited while Gamble made a copy, then folded it and put it back into her bag when he returned.
“Shame he’s the way he is,” the sheriff was saying. “Might have had something meaningful to tell us about that day. Sorry you made the trip all the way out here for nothing.”
“It wasn’t a wasted trip. We got to see the files on the investigation, and look over the trial notes.” Adam rubbed his chin. “Which reminds me. Kendra said that Ian might have had several hundred dollars with him when he left New Jersey. That Zach had told him about an old man who claimed to be a descendant of Cochise who was going to sell some items to Ian. But I didn’t see where he was interviewed.”
“There’s a mention in the file that one of the boys from the ranch did say that Ian and Zach were going to see some old Indian, but no one knew who or where. I believe there was a search made for this man, but there’s no indication that any such person was ever found. Who knows, maybe he didn’t exist. Could be that Zach had made it up.”
“Why would he do that?” Kendra frowned.
“Hey, who knows why kids do half the things they do, make up the stuff they do. You should hear some of the stories I hear.” Gamble paused to answer his ringing phone, gave a few instructions to the person on the other end, then hung up. Turning back to Adam and Kendra he asked, “Now, where will you go from here?”
“I guess the next logical move is to talk to Webster.”
“As in, Edward Paul? Are you serious?” Gamble raised an eyebrow.
“As long as we’re here, we might as well.” Adam turned to Kendra, who was trying to look as if she was not as startled by Adam’s comment as the sheriff was. “W
hy leave a stone unturned?”
“You won’t learn a damn thing from him. One of the assistant county DAs was out at the prison two weeks ago on another case. Says Webster is still insisting he’s innocent.”
“Maybe he figures if he continues to profess his innocence, sooner or later someone will listen.”
“Who knows?” Gamble looked up from his desk and met Kendra’s eyes. “I’d be happy to call the warden out at the prison and arrange for Agent Stark to see Webster. I’m assuming that you won’t be going with him.”
“No, no, I’ll go,” Kendra told him. “I’ll go.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Adam told Kendra as he pulled up to the gatehouse and gave their names to the guard.
“I know I don’t have to. There, Adam, he’s waving us through. Thanks,” she called out the window. “I want to. I mean, I may never again get this close to him. I want to hear what he has to say. And who knows, maybe he’ll slip up and say something.”
“Something like what? Something like, okay, I confess. I killed your brother and your cousin, here’s where the bodies are, and oh, yeah, I gave your brother’s watch to some guy I passed on my way back out of the hills?”
“Hey, it could happen.”
“Ready?” Adam asked after he’d parked the car in the visitors lot.
“As ready as I’m going to be.” Kendra opened the door and got out. The sun had already warmed things up to a toasty ninety degrees, but on the advice of Sheriff Gamble, she wore long pants to keep her legs covered and a camp shirt that covered any shape she might have.
“You don’t need to hear some of the things the men might be yelling, if they see you,” Gamble explained. “So my advice is to cover it all up and pretend not to notice them.”
Kendra had taken the advice, and as a result, was overly warm by the time she reached the prison door. Gratefully, the interior was air-conditioned, though claustrophobic, with an endless series of doors that locked with a heavy, solid sound, and narrow, endless, colorless halls that led farther and farther into the depths of Arroyo State Prison, halfway between Benson and Tucson. The plan was to stop at the prison, meet with Webster, and go directly to the airport for the flight back to Philadelphia.
Until Dark Page 20
