by Rose Beecham
Thinking her feelings for Lone must be written all over her face for the whole world to see, she was grateful when Deputy Tulley moved a few paces ahead and urged his dog on. They exchanged a wave with the deputy as he hastened away and Debbie reached for Lone’s hand, marveling all over again at her good fortune. Apart from making her feel incredibly sexy, Lone made her feel special. She did all those little things that people laughed at these days. She opened doors, helped Debbie into the truck, got things down from high places for her, unscrewed caps and lids, got rid of creepy crawlies.
“Take some water, Debbie doll.” Lone handed her a bottle.
Dehydration was the enemy of alpine rescuers, and Lone had packed all the water they would both need in her own backpack so that Debbie would not be weighed down. They stopped where the contour of the riverbank rose sharply and Debbie drank. The water was so cold it hurt her teeth. She stared at the aqua-gray reservoir in the distance and out across the unforgiving plateau. Winter had vanquished the red and blue of the Four Corners landscape, bleeding the painted hues of all vibrancy until what remained was a mere negative of the summer glory, a colorless infinity with no discernable horizon.
For the first time since they’d started out that morning, Debbie felt a sick chill of apprehension as she gazed around. Lowering her eyes to the icy waters below, she burst into tears and mopped pointlessly at her face with her waterproof gloves.
Lone immediately gathered her close and reassured her, “Everything’s okay, baby. You’re perfectly safe. I’ll never let anything, or anyone, hurt you.”
“It’s not that.” She’d told Lone she found wide-open spaces scary these days.
“Then what?” Lone kissed her cheek. “You can tell me.”
Shocked by her own sudden despair, Debbie whispered, “He’s dead. I know it.” She could just make out the sound of Lone’s heart through her dense clothing.
Lone rocked her slowly, letting her take comfort. “I’m sorry, Debbie doll,” she said eventually. “I know it hurts.”
Debbie played the words over. In Lone’s shoes, having insisted from the start that the little boy was dead, Meg would have said I told you so. Being right would have mattered more to her than being supportive.
Lone’s reaction told Debbie something important. She knew how to love.
*
“Thought I’d find you out here,” a man’s voice carried damply in the snow-burdened air.
Tulley peered back over his shoulder. “Hey, Bobby Lee.”
This was a surprise. Bobby Lee Parker wasn’t the type to hike voluntarily. He kept fit with Pilates for men. He said grunt exercise was for yesterday’s insecure macho man.
Bobby Lee took some long strides to catch up. “How’s it going?”
“Nothing so far.” Tulley whistled Smoke’m to heel and checked the Velcro that secured his mush boots. “You been out long?”
“An hour, tops.”
Which was about all he was dressed for, Tulley thought. Who else but Bobby Lee would show up for a big SAR operation wearing a black cowboy hat, jeans, and a fashionable snow vest over a wool plaid shirt. His only concession to the task at hand was gaiters, like that was all it took. Tulley knew what this was about. Bobby Lee was so vain he couldn’t bring himself to be seen in goggles and a helmet. He’d rather look good than behave responsibly.
Not for the first time Tulley wondered what Jude saw in the self-satisfied cowboy. Admittedly he was a smooth talker who could charm a hog gone wild, and he had what one of the female deputies called bad boy pheromones. Agatha was always harping on about his James Dean charisma and how as Jude should count herself lucky he didn’t mind her being taller than him. Tulley didn’t see what the fuss was all about. He had a better six-pack than Bobby Lee, and he could shoot straight.
Only a few weeks back, Bobby Lee had got down on his knees and proposed to Jude in Nero’s restaurant, while the staff was all standing around with champagne and one of those French desserts they set fire to. Tulley would have paid fifty bucks to see that. But Jude told Bobby Lee she needed time to think about the proposal, an answer that made everyone at the MCSO lose their minds once the story got around. No one had expected the relationship to last a week, let alone four months, and now there was a marriage offer. Tulley couldn’t set foot in the Cortez stationhouse without everyone pestering him to spill.
People had trouble picturing Jude in a wedding dress and were always asking Tulley if she was going to get married in her uniform instead. That’s if she went for the offer, which a lot of folks thought would be wise, since a woman like her probably didn’t meet too many males who would overlook her job and her lack of feminine qualities. There was also talk that Jude wouldn’t do it because she’d be marrying beneath her. She was a decorated detective and college educated, and Bobby Lee had a rap sheet and a pothead artist mother who went to that antiwar protest in Crawford, Texas.
But Tulley couldn’t imagine those differences in background would factor in; Jude wasn’t snooty. No, he thought the problem was something else besides that. Jude and Bobby Lee had been dating for the past four months, but they were the least affectionate couple Tulley had ever seen. He suspected the difficulty lay with Jude, since Bobby Lee was always bragging on his conquests and the special talent he had for pleasuring his ladyfolk. Maybe it was job-related. Maybe she was scarred. Before she took a step down to work in a two-bit sheriff’s office, she was an FBI agent working in child protection. That had to leave its mark.
Any rate, she had intimacy issues. That’s what Tulley had learned from reading magazines with sealed sections on relationships. He found these helpful because he had issues himself. After his last girlfriend, Alyssa Critch, decided to give him a black eye when he broke up with her, he thought it was time he got to the bottom of his bad luck with the ladies. Since then, he’d discovered how little he knew from his parents or his schooling. It had been quite a shock to find out he’d been lied to by the people he trusted. In the end, he wrote to The Answer Man for advice about his extreme nervousness around the female sex. His letter and the answer got featured on the Web site.
He showed this to Bobby Lee the night of the marriage proposal, after he arrived wanting to unload his hard-luck story over beer and pretzels. Bobby Lee agreed with The Answer Man that the only way for Tulley to get beyond these crippling social handicaps was to practice with women he would never see again. They were planning a trip to Denver where Bobby Lee knew some nice ladies who would not talk about Tulley behind his back, ask embarrassing questions about the scars all over his torso, or make him do stuff unless he wanted to. Sure, they were paid for their services. But Bobby Lee said, sometimes a professional was exactly what the situation called for. Tulley had been saving for the trip.
They’d watched Gladiator that night, which was one of the two DVDs Bobby Lee ever picked out when he came by. The other was Terminator 2. This taste for action movies was, at least, one thing he had in common with Jude. Neither of them could watch Dancing at Lughnasa all the way through, and if they were visiting and Tulley wanted to get rid of them, he’d put on The English Patient and it was run, don’t walk. They fidgeted with their popcorn so much during The Hours that Tulley and Agatha had to move to a different part of the theater so they wouldn’t be humiliated. Later Jude said the movie was a downer and she wished they’d gone to The Recruit instead.
“Looks like he’s caught a whiff of something.” Bobby Lee indicated Smoke’m.
He had his head back and was taking in the faint southerly breeze so keenly his jowls were vibrating.
Tulley tightened the K-9 harness, a sign to Smoke’m that he was working. “Good boy,” he praised. “Go to work.”
Smoke’m needed no encouragement. He gave a short howl and set off swinging his head slightly from side to side like an elephant, velvet ears flapping.
“He’s fanning the scent to his olfactory receptors,” Tulley explained.
The area they were searching was a stretch of t
he Dolores local fly fishermen liked to keep secret. A couple of them involved with the search had already told Tulley they hadn’t seen a brown in these waters for ten years and the cutthroats weren’t worth the price of a lure. Smoke’m bayed and Tulley’s mouth went dry with excitement. He scanned the snow ahead seeking a suspicious-looking mound or a stain that didn’t belong.
“You think he can smell the kid?” Bobby Lee asked.
“Can’t tell till he signals.”
“Man, we’ll be all over the news if we’re the ones who find him.”
“I hope he’s alive.”
“I’m not real optimistic about that,” Bobby Lee said flatly. “You better prepare yourself, buddy.”
Tulley glanced sideways and read the warning in Bobby Lee’s sleepy blue eyes. He wanted to keep an open mind and stay positive, but he had no idea how he would react if they found a body. The only time he had ever seen a dead kid was when he attended a traffic accident once and a paramedic had carried a limp six-year-old from the wreckage.
Smoke’m screeched to a halt about thirty feet from the forest road, where it started cutting in toward the reservoir. Whining, he pawed a patch of snow and gazed at Tulley with mournful dignity, waiting for the next command.
Tulley gave him one of the treats he coveted most, half a knockwurst sausage, and said, “Dig.” He took Bobby Lee’s advice and prepared himself. He could hardly bear to look. If Smoke’m had to dig, the news was going to be bad.
Bobby Lee clapped him on the shoulder. “Whatever it is, think about this—at least we’ll all know.”
“Yep.” Tulley’s mind strayed to Jude’s brother, the one that went missing when they were kids.
Jude had never said a word about him until the dust settled after the Darlene Huntsberger homicide the previous year. Then one day she just up and told him the whole story. How Ben was twelve, and one day he didn’t come home from school. How close they were and how she’d spent most of her life trying to find out what happened to him, becoming an FBI agent so she could work in the Crimes Against Children Unit. The not knowing had done her head in.
She’d showed him a picture of the two of them dressed up in home-sewn pilot uniforms. Ben had blond waves, big gentle eyes, and a sweet smile. He looked more like a girl than she did.
Gone, Tulley thought, vanished without a trace. How did that happen? He could see how it affected Jude, even now. She had moved all the way out here so she could leave the past behind, but geography only changed the view from your truck window. He knew that himself.
He thought everything would change when he left Ohio. No one knew him in Colorado. He wasn’t going to run into any of the guys who picked on him all through school. And what if he did? He was the one with the gun and the badge. He’d only been back to visit his ma once since he graduated from the police academy. That visit was for Thanksgiving a few months back, and he made sure to show up in town wearing his uniform. That wiped the grins from a few faces.
He felt like a million bucks the day he was at old man Gleeson’s gas station filling up the truck and who should pull in behind him but Mr. Star Quarterback, Greg Helms. You’d think a guy who called you faggot all through high school and held you down in the john so he could put out his cigarettes on your chest would remember your name. But Helms walked right on by before he even recognized Tulley, then he turned around and his face went dark red.
He said, “Fuck, is that you…uh…uh…”
The guy was slightly shorter than Tulley, and his football jock muscles had been replaced with a big gut. Bobby Lee would have said he’d gone from fab to flab.
Tulley rested his hand on his gun and drawled in his deepest voice, “Yeah, it’s me. Virgil Tulley.”
Helms looked like he was about to spew. “Hey, pal. That shit back in school—I never meant nothing by it. Okay?”
Here was the moment he’d fantasized about most of his life. Face to face with one of the bullies who made his life hell, and the guy was shitting himself. Tulley had a feeling if he told Helms to kneel down and lick the oil stains off of the concrete, he’d do it.
Instead, he said, “That was a long time ago. What are you up to these days, Greg?”
Helms flicked sweat away from his nose with his chubby fingers. “Not much. Still bumming around here.”
They talked for a few minutes more. Turned out he was a loser living in his mom’s basement and bagging groceries part-time. He’d married a girl from his senior year, and she’d taken their kid and left him for another man. He was taking Zoloft.
They said good-bye and Tulley drove off slapping the steering wheel and singing “We Don’t Need Another Hero” from that underrated masterpiece Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Not once had he stuttered during the encounter. Greg Helms couldn’t even look him in the eye. Who was the tough guy now?
Tulley pumped a few muscles and reminded himself that he’d missed a day on the Bowflex thanks to the unfolding drama of Corban Foley’s disappearance. He called encouragement to Smoke’m, who had dug a hole so deep all you could see was snow spraying up over the edges.
Finally he gave a low whine and the snow stopped flying. Tulley and Bobby Lee moved to the edge of the hole and stared down. Smoke’m was on his haunches next to a plastic Safeway shopping bag knotted at the top.
“Want me to get it out?” Bobby Lee offered.
Tulley dropped his backpack and took a camera from the front pocket. “I have to photograph it first.”
He wasn’t entirely sure what to do after that, whether to open it or call the mobile command post and wait for them to send the right people. The procedure had been explained, but now that he wanted to remember he couldn’t. The bag wasn’t big enough to hold a child so there was no rush to look inside. Tulley took photos, including several of Smoke’m standing in his alert pose over the hole.
Then he phoned the powers that be and they told him to mark the site and carefully extract the bag, then open it. Tulley exchanged his Kevlar gloves for latex and extracted the bag. It weighed almost nothing.
Relieved he said, “At least it’s not body parts.”
Bobby Lee crouched down, watching closely as Tulley photographed, then loosened, the knot. They both peered into the bag.
“Kid’s clothes,” Bobby Lee said.
Tulley studied the dark stain around the neckline of a blue sweater. He pointed it out to Bobby Lee. “That’s blood.”
They looked at each other.
Bobby Lee said, “Jude’ll want to hear about this. Like, now.”
Chapter Nine
Tonya tugged at the hem of her black Lycra dress, trying to pull it down so it covered her legs better. All she succeeded in doing was lowering the neckline. She wished she’d spent more than two seconds looking in the mirror before she walked out onto the front door step and all the cameras started clicking and popping. The dress was Amberlee’s idea. She said it was slimming, being black, and the color was appropriate since she was the grieving mother. Tonya was too exhausted to point out that Corban was missing, not dead.
Shivering with the cold, she fended off microphones and started to read the short statement she’d been practicing. But her throat tightened so much she had to stop. The cameras loomed like vultures. Everywhere she looked big black glass eyes gleamed at her and flashes popped.
Amberlee said loudly, “My sister will take a few questions,” and shoved an elbow into her ribs.
A TV reporter shouted, “The police are still questioning your boyfriend, Wade Miller. Do you think he had something to do with your son’s disappearance?”
“No.” Tonya was angry that anyone would even suggest it. “Wade loves Corban. He loves little kids.”
“Do you think Corban’s alive?” a woman asked. Tonya recognized Suzette Kelly from Channel 8.
The reporter was everything Tonya would choose to be if she could dial a new life. Size 2 but with implants. A narrow face with a cute little nose. Perfect blond hair flicked softly back in a layered Jennife
r Anniston style. The kind of pink designer suit you’d have to leave Cortez to buy. Normally Tonya thought pearl necklaces were ridiculous, but Suzette looked classy in hers. It was the expensive kind with the really big pearls. Over the top of her outfit, she had on a pale pink coat with a white fur collar that made her look like a fashion model. Tonya thought it probably cost more than Wade’s truck.
She tried to answer Suzette’s question. “I don’t know. I—”
Before she could put her feelings into words, Amberlee cut in and said, “We’re praying our little angel will come home soon, Suzette.”
“And you are?”
“Mrs. Amberlee Foley, Tonya’s big sister. Corban’s my nephew.”
“Corban is your ex-husband’s son with your sister, the half brother of your daughter. Do I have that right?”
“Yes.” Before Suzette had time to ask another awkward question, Amberlee pointed to a man with the whitest teeth Tonya had ever seen.
“Brendon Bailey, Channel Four,” he announced. “Tonya, sources close to the inquiry have alleged that your boyfriend has a history of domestic violence, yet you left your baby with him. Weren’t you concerned?”
Tonya floundered. The only domestic violence she knew about was Brittany Kemple giving Wade a nose bleed. She said, “Wade’s really good with Corban.” It sounded feeble. She started to frame a better response when Suzette Kelly cut in.
“You were in a bar celebrating your sister’s birthday while this man was with your child. Do you blame yourself?”
Tonya gasped. She wanted to say something dignified, but all that came out was a soft grunting sound.
Amberlee said, “My sister’s upset. That’s all for now, folks. I’ll be available for more comments later.” She offered a big smile and placed her arm around Tonya’s shoulder, leaning into her so their heads were level. In Tonya’s ear, she whispered, “Make another plea.”
