by Rose Beecham
“Do what?” Jude asked.
“End us.”
Jude stopped, far enough from the others that they would not be heard clearly. Facing Mercy, she rolled the dice one last time. “Does it matter?”
The question hung between them, imposing a leaden calm the way an earthquake did before the tremors began.
Tears sparkled in Mercy’s eyes. “This is pointless. You’ll never understand.”
“You’re right,” Jude conceded bitterly. “I never will.”
Chapter Seven
Known to his buddies as Gums, owing to party tricks involving his false teeth, Hank Thompson was older than the other losers he ran with, a man whose claim to fame was that he had been struck by lightning and lived to tell the tale. He wasted no time sharing this God-given reprieve with Jude, whose luck it was to be taking down his statement at 7:30 a.m. when she hadn’t had coffee.
“The Big Guy strikes you down—you sit up and take notice,” he announced with blinding logic. “Right after that, I made a pledge.”
Jude could hardly wait.
“I live a monastic existence,” her subject confided. “No worldly distractions. Neither of the flesh, nor a material nature.”
Jude interpreted this to mean he was unemployed, lived in a dump, and couldn’t get laid. She said, “So, you’re on welfare?”
Gums sucked a breath noisily past the thinnest lips Jude had ever seen. “The Big Guy sees to it that I have the time needed to study on His word.”
“Where does the tequila drinking fit in?”
“The elixir helps me receive my visions.”
Jude pictured the defense wetting themselves when they got their first look at this witness. Inwardly groaning, she went with the flow. “Did you have a vision on the evening of Saturday, March tenth?”
“I was tasked with a foul duty.” He smoothed his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. “The slaying of a minion of Satan himself. I speak of a goat that caused offense to a virtuous lady.”
“I see.” Jude flipped through her notes, buying a little time to think about her line of questioning. She needed to confirm Matthew Roache’s story and find out if Thompson had an agenda of his own that could have led him to kidnap a small child from a woman who had no money. “Who is this virtuous lady?”
“Heather, sister of Matthew. He is unworthy, but she is radiant in God’s eyes.”
Jude contemplated the possibility that this witness had abducted and probably murdered Corban Foley and was busy setting up his insanity plea. On the other hand, it seemed plausible that someone who’d survived being struck by lightning might be missing some key brain cells.
“Why did you vandalize Tonya Perkins’s home?” she asked.
He got worked up and started along a deeply nutty track in which all women, with the exception of the fair Heather, were sent to tempt weak mankind, and Tonya was a demon in disguise. When he got really loud and flecks of foam began to gather in the corners of his mouth, Jude handed him a glass of water, insisting, “Calm down and drink this, Mr. Thompson.”
He took the water and lifted his gaze heavenward. “The Big Guy has his eye on me,” he said with satisfaction. “I thirsted and He sent water.”
Once his breathing had slowed down, Jude asked, “Mr. Thompson. Are you on any medication? Pills?”
“I can’t take those. God stops talking to me.”
“I see.” A delusional individual off his meds is at the home of a missing child on the evening of his disappearance. Reasonable doubt didn’t get any better than that, assuming they could make a case against Wade Miller in the first place.
Gloomily, Jude surveyed her subject. Every instinct she had told her Miller was responsible for whatever had happened to Corban Foley, but she knew better than to conduct an investigation with an attachment to any one theory of the crime. Foregone conclusions spelled trouble; it was fatally easy to overlook important clues if you couldn’t see past your own beliefs. Twenty years ago, a guy like Thompson wouldn’t have made it out of an interview room without signing a confession. Death row had seen plenty like him over the years. She had to find some way to rule him out unequivocally, or back up any confession they extracted with a mountain of hard evidence.
“Tell me, how do you think God feels about a woman like Tonya rearing an innocent child,” she asked in a conversational tone. “Do you think he might be concerned?”
“Certainly.”
She framed a hypothetical; these often yielded insights, especially from offenders deep in denial. “If you were God, what would you do about that?”
Thompson grew restless, wringing his hands and shifting in his seat. “I don’t know. I’m not God.”
“Mr. Thompson, did God ask you to take Corban Foley from his mother’s home?”
His wild eyes stilled momentarily and he said with conviction, “No.”
“Tell me what you did when you arrived at Ms. Perkins’s house.”
“We smashed the windows, and I cast forth the head of Satan’s minion.”
“Where did you cast it?”
“Into that she-devil’s lair. I threw the hat in there, too.”
“What happened then?”
“We drove away and I took more of the elixir of truth. Then God delivered a message unto me.”
“What was that message?” Jude prompted.
“I wrote it down.” He reached into his pants pocket and produced a grubby piece of paper folded into an origami swan.
Jude unfolded it and flattened it out on the table as best she could. The note said, Admit yourself.
Hank Thompson stared down at it, apparently mystified. “Do you know what it means?”
Jude felt sad. What it meant was that her subject, once a successful builder and candidate for local office, as described by the deputy who’d briefed her earlier, was still in there somewhere. Lost. Trying to find a way back to his sanity.
She took one of the hands he could not keep still and said, “Hank?”
Something calmed once again in Thompson’s eyes, and for a split second Jude thought she glimpsed a rational being.
He said, “Heather calls me Hank, too.”
Jude smiled at him. “Listen, Hank. I think God wants you to go to a peaceful place where you can rest. I have a feeling that’s what the message means. If you like, one of the deputies can drive you to a place I know about. A hospital.”
Alarm jammed his expression. “Is Heather there?”
“No, but l can speak to her about visiting you.” Trying once more to reach the part of him that could still reason, she said, “Hank, please think carefully. Do you know where Tonya’s little boy is?”
He shook his head. “Want me to ask God?”
Why not give the troops something to snicker about when they reviewed the interview tape? “Knock yourself out,” she invited.
Thompson got down onto the floor and prayed in the sudjood position of a Muslim, his forehead on the floor. The deputy standing at the door mumbled something about domestic terrorists. Jude thought, Not even close.
When their subject had communed with the Big Guy long enough, he scrambled back up and sat at the table once more.
“Well?” Jude asked.
“I need elixir.”
“God only answers your prayers when you’re drunk?”
Thompson gave her a look. “He said you’ll find him.”
“Did he say where?”
“God doesn’t answer for the Devil,” Thompson informed her snippily. “Make no mistake. This is Satan’s work.”
*
“Tell them to go away,” Tonya complained. Media vans and reporters waving big fluffy microphones had her sister’s place surrounded. She wished she’d never come here after the police sent her home, but she couldn’t afford a motel.
“Are you crazy?” Amberlee poured herself into her tightest black jeans, tucked in her white stretch lace top, and started trying on different pumps. “Everyone’s out there. Channel Nine News. Channel
Four. CNN. MSNBC. No way are you hiding in here for the rest of the day. Get dressed.”
“What for? I’m not going out there.”
Amberlee fastened the ankle straps of the cherry red platforms she’d picked out. “You can blow this chance if you want, but I’m not that stupid.”
“What are you talking about?”
Amberlee wobbled over to the bed and dragged the covers off Tonya. “Don’t you get it? They’re here to see you. This is a big story.”
Tonya stared at the phone. Any minute it would ring and someone would say Corban was safe and they were bringing him home. There was still time for him to be okay. She started crying again. She was a mess. She only had to think about her baby and she couldn’t control herself.
“I should be out there looking for him,” she sobbed. “It’s been a whole day. What if he’s hiding somewhere like in a log or a cave. Maybe he’ll get scared if he hears the searchers. He’s shy. Sometimes he only answers to me.”
Amberlee looked impatient. “You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. He’ll answer.”
“Oh, God. Why did I leave him?” Tonya rolled onto her stomach and hugged one of the pillows against her. “I shouldn’t have left him.”
“I suppose you’re going to blame me next.” Amberlee plugged in the flat iron and set about straightening her hair.
She’d spent most of the morning with Saran Wrap around her head to make her home bleach kit work faster. Her hair was now the exact shade of platinum Tonya had wanted for her own hair, only she’d been afraid to use an extreme lightener in case her hair broke off at the roots. So she ended up with a color Amberlee said was light strawberry blond, but was really a pinkish yellow that made her skin look weird no matter what foundation she used.
“Why would I blame you?” Tonya wiped her face and thought about taking a shower. She didn’t know what to do with herself. One minute she felt like throwing up, the next she was crying, then she felt far away. And in between all of those, she got so panicked all she could do was walk up and down the house so she wouldn’t lay in a ball and scream.
“Well, it was my birthday party,” Amberlee pointed out. “I starved myself for months and lost forty pounds so I’d look good. How do you think I feel?”
Tonya hadn’t thought about it. She supposed she should have. Amberlee was her sister and she hadn’t even noticed the weight loss. Forty pounds. Tonya wished she could take off the weight she’d put on having Corban. Last time she looked, the scale said 180. She didn’t even want to think about it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m gonna be down to two hundred by Thanksgiving.”
“You don’t even look fat, Ambam. Guys think you’re hot.”
“Thanks, baby sis.” Amberlee was quiet for a few seconds, then she said with a frown, “What’s taking them so long down at the sheriff’s office? I thought Wade would be here by now.”
So did Tonya. “Well, he was the one looking after Corban. The detective said they have to rule him and me out first.”
Amberlee opened the flat iron and stared down at her hair. “Fuck. My hair’s fried. It’s snapping off. Oh, God. This is a nightmare.”
“I told you not to leave that thirty volume on so long.” Tonya got out of bed and found a sweater. “Sit down. Let me see.”
Obediently, Amberlee plunked herself on the velvet-covered stool in front of the dressing table. She met Tonya’s gaze in the mirror and said, “Your eyes are all puffy. You better put some ice on them before we go out there.”
Tonya turned down the heat and slowly worked a strand of her sister’s hair through the flat iron. “Keep it on this setting,” she announced. “Then it won’t break.”
“Thanks. I love you.” Amberlee smiled. “Now go take a shower. You’ll feel better once you’re dressed.” As Tonya headed out the door, she called after her, “I’ll do your makeup so you look good for the cameras.”
Chapter Eight
Debbie gazed out across a white world pockmarked with dark blotches—the tracks of SAR team members. Hundreds of searchers were spread out along the entire route from Cortez to Dove Creek, and to the reservoir, and helicopters were conducting an aerial search. Lone said that although nobody was calling it a search-and-recovery operation yet, anyone with a clue knew they were looking for a body.
Debbie didn’t want to believe that. She imagined happier scenarios—the child taken as a prank, then left safe and wrapped against the elements somewhere he would be found, or abandoned alive by kidnappers who had a change of heart. She kept waiting for that triumphant shout, the thrill of hearing a soft cry and seeing a little one held high in the air and rushed to open ground where one of the helicopters would swoop down to carry him to the hospital. She wanted to see the mother weeping on TV, thanking everyone who had braved the snow and freezing cold to bring her baby back.
That morning, as they’d assembled at the staging area in Cahone, the Montezuma County sheriff had announced that this was the most extensive search operation ever mounted in the Four Corners. Debbie warmed with pride to be a part of something bigger than herself. Most of the time, she never felt as if her life amounted to anything. Today was different. She was filled with energy and determination. She felt good about herself and not as shy around people as she normally did.
Although they were among strangers, everyone seemed to be a friend. It happened at times like this, when a community had to pull together. Barriers broke down and people understood that their shared humanity meant more than their differences. No one had given her and Lone a second glance, even when Lone took her hand to help her over difficult terrain.
An hour earlier, when an SAR leader noticed Lone’s equipment and Lone mentioned her military experience, she and Debbie were reassigned to the crew searching upstream along a ten-mile shoreline of the Dolores River between Bradfield Bridge and Lone Dome. They were with three K-9 units from Dolores, German Shepherds and their handlers and navigators, plus fifty searchers including a Nordic rescue team on skis.
This part of the Dolores was one of those places you’d never find unless you knew exactly where to look. The River of Sorrows meandered through a remote canyon in the Mesa Verde country. Snow hung over the sandstone walls on either side of the river basin and clung to the spindly junipers that straggled along the riverbanks. The water’s silent, sluggish progress was oddly hypnotic.
As she stared down at it, Debbie gulped in the dry Colorado air and tried not to picture a child’s body drifting by. The mere fact that they were searching here meant this was a possibility. The police had to have suspicions. She probed the snow with her pole, this way and that, feeling for what lay beneath and placing her feet where the ground felt level. She had snowshoes in her backpack, but for now wore heavy snow boots and gaiters that kept her feet and legs dry.
Apart from her nose and cheeks, the only parts of her face not covered by her muffler and goggles, she was warm and damp with sweat. They were moving slowly, scouring every square foot, but it was still hard work, and with every hour that passed, a daunting inevitability clawed at her resolve. It was hard to sustain hope, yet the searchers did. That morning, as they waited at the staging area, Debbie had heard various stories of unbelievable survival. Just a few years earlier, a small boy had made it after forty-eight hours lost in this area, in winter conditions. It could happen.
“I’ll take the bottom of this rise, at the river.” Lone headed down a sharp incline. “Carry on and I’ll join you when it levels out again.”
“Okay. Be careful,” Debbie called after her.
She stopped to pull up her gaiters after a few minutes and looked back when she heard the sound of panting. A Montezuma County deputy halted his bloodhound a few feet from her. The dog was wearing boots and a snow jacket. To Debbie’s astonishment this garment was emblazoned on both sides with a Marlboro logo.
“How come your dog is advertising cigarettes?” she asked. “I thought tobacco sponsorship was i
llegal.”
“No one else came up with the cash.” The deputy, a young man with coal black hair flattened by his helmet, lifted his goggles. “The Marlboro people have been good to Smoke’m and me.”
“Your dog’s name is Smoke’m?” Debbie almost fell over. Literally.
The deputy caught her arm and helped her find her balance. His face was so handsome, she couldn’t help but stare. Where was the justice in men getting the best eyelashes? This guy had the longest she had ever seen, and they framed eyes the rich golden brown of caramelized sugar.
He smiled at her with the sweet shyness of a girl, and Debbie thought if she’d been straight and impressionable, she’d have fallen at his feet. While she was trying to assemble some coherent words, Lone marched briskly back up the slope and introduced the both of them.
They all shook gloved paws and the deputy said, “I’m Virgil Tulley. I’m with the MCSO, based in Paradox Valley.”
“In the old schoolhouse?” Debbie asked.
“Yes, ma’am. There’s just the two of us. One detective and myself. It’s a remote substation, you understand.”
“My place is right down the road.” Debbie smiled. “Small world, huh?”
“Sure is. It’s real community-minded of you both coming down here, by the way.” Tulley lifted his field glasses and signaled to a figure some way ahead of them.
Debbie was immediately embarrassed that she was distracting a K-9 handler from his duties, not to mention staring at a man, even though she’d never found one attractive. Lone had warned her about losing focus. It was easy to let her mind drift in the sprawling white expanse. The glare from the snow was strangely mesmerizing, and she was also tired. She glanced sideways at Lone and smiled at the thought. They’d had so little sleep the previous night, she was amazed either of them could stay upright.
Her heart jumped as she met Lone’s eyes. A jolt of raw awareness passed between them, and Debbie’s knees almost buckled. She might appreciate Deputy Tulley’s looks the way she would admire any beautiful creature, but Lone aroused a completely different reaction. Debbie felt hot, stifled in her layers of cotton and wool. If they’d been by themselves here she would have torn off her clothes and rolled naked in the snow, just to wallow in sensation.
