by C. J. Box
He drove by slowly, saw that the curtains were open and the lights on. He continued down the block and parked under a dark canopy of old cottonwood trees, as far away from the streetlights as he could get.
Jess had a yellow cowboy slicker rolled up behind the seat, but he decided to leave it there. The yellow would stand out, even in the dark. He’d just get wet.
Leaving the Winchester in the truck, he walked toward Carey’s house in the rain, stumbling once on a section of sidewalk that had risen and buckled from a tree root.
He didn’t know whether to knock, ring the bell, or try to figure out what Fiona was doing there first. As he approached the house, a thin stream of rainwater poured from his hat brim. He could hear nothing from inside because of the sound of the rain coursing through the trees and hitting the street and sidewalk with a sound like applause.
Rather than walk up the sidewalk to the front door and lighted porch, Jess cut across the grass of Carey’s next-door neighbor toward the corner of the sheriff’s house. There was a picture window in front of the house and a smaller window on the side that was open except for a storm screen. Aiming for the opened window and the shadows beside it, he felt the suck of soft mud beneath his boots. Christ, he thought, I’m walking across their newly planted garden. I’ll apologize later.
Jess stood to the side of the open window in the mud, slightly under the eave of the roof so the rain didn’t hit him. He looked out from the shadows and saw no cars on the street, no neighbors looking out of their windows at the rain.
The sound of Fiona Pritzle’s sharp, high-pitched voice cut through the rain like a razor through fabric.
“There’s always been something odd about him, don’t you think?” Fiona was saying. “I’ve really noticed it lately. Like he’s got a secret life, and he doesn’t want anybody to know it.”
Jess took a chance and looked in the window. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t be entering anyone’s view.
Fiona sat in the middle of the room, perched on the edge of a chair that must have been brought in from the kitchen table. Her hands were clamped between her thighs. She leaned forward toward Carey, who sat on his couch in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair uncombed. Jess could see the side of his face, and he looked troubled or irritated. Since it was Fiona sitting there talking, Jess figured both were likely. A man Jess didn’t recognize at first was in an overstuffed chair across from Carey listening to Fiona. He was trim and compact, with close-cropped silver hair. His bearing suggested authority, his face a mask of world-weariness except for his eyes, which studied Fiona with a kind of manic fascination. Jess could see his face in three-quarter profile and identified him from Annie’s drawing. It was Singer.
“He seems, you know, evasive,” Fiona said. “I try to be friendly and sweet as pie, but he always seems to be somewhere else, you know? Like he has other things on his mind.”
Singer turned to Carey, ignoring Fiona, and said, “Do you know him, Sheriff? Is he familiar to you? Gonzo had a problem this afternoon with a rancher who wouldn’t let him search his property. Is this the same guy?”
“I know him,” Carey said. “In fact, I sat next to him at breakfast at the Panhandle just this morning, Mr. Singer. He did ask a few questions about the investigation, as I recall.”
Jesus, Jess thought, they’re talking about me. What is Fiona up to? Jess withdrew from the front of the window but pressed his shoulder against the siding next to it so he could hear better and not be seen.
Fiona said, “You know as well as me what’s happened out there over the past few years. First, his wife left him. You know about his son. He’s a tragedy, just a tragedy. Something obviously happened to him.”
Carey said to Singer, “He’s the trustee who mops the floor at the station. You’ve probably seen him around.”
“I’ve seen him,” Singer said.
Jess couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Fiona continued, “Why else would an old single man be buying food that only little kids eat?”
“That’s not much to go on, Fiona,” the sheriff said.
Her voice rose. “But think about it. His ranch is failing. His son is a mess. His wife leaves him, but he shows absolutely no interest in the opposite sex. I mean, single lonely man, available woman”—Jess could imagine her gesturing to herself—“and he doesn’t do anything? At first I thought it was me, but maybe it’s because he has other interests, you know? Even his employee left him recently, I found out. He’s completely by himself out there. Who knows what he’s up to? Maybe he’s got those kids, and he’s holding them prisoner!”
“Fiona …” The sheriff was skeptical. He turned to Singer. “What’s this do to our theory about Tom Boyd?”
Singer shook his head quickly. “Not much.”
Carey paused, waiting for clarification.
“We’ve got the tape,” Singer said. “Boyd’s missing. That part of our theory still holds.”
“So where does this rancher fit in, if at all?”
Jess was frozen where he stood, stunned.
“I’ve read a lot of magazine articles about sexual predators,” Fiona interjected, her voice rising. “It grows in them. Just grows in them until they get the opportunity to gratify it. I’ve never thought before how much he fits the profile. Look”—she dropped her tone again—“he gets mail in large envelopes without any return addresses on them. Maybe that’s how he gets his pornography?”
No, Jess thought absently. That’s how developers send offers these days, knowing I won’t open them if I know where they came from. Jesus …
“I’m surprised you haven’t looked to make sure,” Carey said, deadpan.
“I can’t believe you said that,” she sniffed. “That’s a huge insult. I could lose my job with the postal service if I did, you know.”
Fiona suddenly got an idea and nearly shot out of her seat. “Hold it! Maybe that’s how he met Tom Boyd? UPS delivers out there, you know. Maybe the two of them struck up a friendship based on a common interest,” she paused dramatically, “pedophilia. I’ve read where those people seek each other out.”
Jess didn’t know what to do. Burst in, set the record straight? He was so flummoxed he didn’t even know if he could speak clearly. But how would he explain the groceries without telling them the rest or coming up with some kind of lie? What if the sheriff held him, or arrested him on the spot? Singer could send that dark ex-cop, Gonzalez, back to his house to find the Taylor children. He wished Singer weren’t there, because he might have a chance of clearing himself if it was just Fiona and the sheriff, because obviously Carey didn’t give Fiona much credibility. But with Singer there …
“You can either do something, or I’ll call my contacts at the networks,” Fiona threatened. “I’m sure they’d find this new development very interesting.”
Jess walked away from the window. The rain pounded his hat. He was angry, and getting angrier. He swung into the cab of his pickup, started the motor, and roared down the street, not caring if anyone could hear him leave.
Sunday, 6:56 P.M.
JESS COULD see J.J. through the locked front doors of the county courthouse. As usual in his orange one-piece trustee jumpsuit, J.J. was cleaning, spraying banisters with disinfectant, rubbing the wood until it glowed. Jess rapped hard on the glass of the door. Inside, J.J. looked up, but in the wrong direction. Jess rapped again, hitting the glass so hard it stung his knuckles. J.J.’s head swiveled, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Jess. There was something canine in the way J.J. looked at him.
“J.J., I need to talk with you,” Jess shouted. The rain pounded the street behind him and sluiced through the gutters.
J.J. shrugged, couldn’t hear him. But he let the cloth fall from his hands and walked slowly across the floor to the doors.
Jess could see J.J.’s mouth. “Locked.”
Who had a key? Jess wondered. He needed to talk with his son.
Jess pulled futilely on the doors, rattling them. J.J. watc
hed as if he expected alarms to go off. He shook his head, scared to open them from the inside.
“Hold on,” Jess said, raising his hand, and turned for his pickup that was parked on the street. He returned with the rifle. J. J. saw it, and backed away, his eyes wide.
Jess used the butt of it to break through a panel of glass on the door. No alarm sounded. He reached through the hole and pulled back on the bar, opening the door.
“I don’t mean to scare you,” Jess told J.J. as he stepped inside and let the door wheeze shut.
“I could get in trouble,” J.J. said. Jess noticed that J.J.’s voice was clearer than usual. It had a deep timbre to it that was usually missing. Jess knew what that indicated. This is when a window sometimes opened, if briefly, a window of illumination. It didn’t last long.
“J.J., I think you can help me,” Jess said, then rephrased it: “I need your help.”
“You broke the door. Man, I’m going to get in trouble now.”
“Tell them I did it.”
J.J. nodded.
“You seem okay. Are you okay?”
“Not really, no,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “I gotta go back for my meds. What time is it?”
Jess looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly seven.”
“I’m late. I shoulda been back to the ward. They’re gonna come looking for me.”
Jess tried to calm himself. If he was calm, J.J. was more likely to respond.
J.J. said, “When my meds wear off my own sick brain starts taking over. I see shit I know can’t really be there.”
“I know that, son,” Jess said, stepping closer. J.J. recoiled.
“Don’t worry,” Jess said, “I won’t touch you.”
“It isn’t you,” J.J. said. “It’s your germs. I can’t get dirty, like these floors. I clean them and clean them, but the people here, they make them filthy again every day. They bring their filth in with them from the outside. I can’t win.”
Jess breathed deeply. He felt a pang for taking advantage this way.
“J.J., tell me about the ex-cops. There are four of them. You’ve been around them here. Are they good?”
“No.” Emphatic, spittle flying.
“Are they honest?”
“NO!”
“What have you heard?”
“They want to find those kids,” J.J. said.
Jess grimaced. Of course they wanted to find the Taylors.
“They want to hurt them,” J.J. said. “And they called Monica a bitch.”
“Monica Taylor?” Jess asked, taken aback by J.J.’s familiarity with her. “You know her?”
J.J. smiled a dark and secret smile. It reminded Jess of the way J.J. used to be, before all of this happened. That wasn’t necessarily good.
“She’s a pretty woman,” his son said. “She was wild.”
This startled Jess. “What do you mean? How did you know her?”
“Some things I remember like they happened yesterday. I remember Monica that way.”
Jess had more questions, but didn’t want to take J.J. down a path they’d get lost on. He didn’t know how long this rare sliver of clarity would last, and he had to use it.
“About the ex-cops. Why don’t you tell the sheriff?” Jess asked.
“He won’t believe me. I don’t want to get in trouble. I like this job, cleaning. I can’t stay in my cell. It’s filthy and disgusting, germs fester there. I need to be out. Away from the nightmares …” J.J. looked away.
“J.J., stay with me,” Jess admonished gently. “I know you can leave here anytime you want. You’ve done your time. You can just walk out whenever you want.”
“Man, I need my meds, Dad.”
Dad. He called him dad. Jess felt his chest well up.
“Come with me,” Jess said suddenly. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
A slight smile. “I want to see the ranch. And Mom.”
Jess didn’t want to explain. Not yet. Now, he just wanted to get J.J. away from there. With what he knew, his son was in danger from the ex-cops and possibly the sheriff. J.J. didn’t know that, but Jess couldn’t leave him there to find out. Jess’s mind whirled, and he felt a tumble of emotions. This had been the first real conversation he had had with his son in over ten years. He was elated, while at the same time he wondered if J.J. had been in there all along, waiting to come out. And Jess had neglected to try.
Jess backed up and opened the door. “Come on, son,” he said gently.
J.J. stiffened. He seemed to grow taller as he became more rigid. His hands, which had hung at his sides, curled into claws.
“No.”
“What do you mean?” Jess said.
“I can’t go out there. It’s too filthy.”
“It’s raining,” Jess said, hoping that would make more sense to J.J. than it did to him.
“NO!” J.J. shouted like a five-year-old, and stomped his boot. “No, Dad! I can’t.”
Jess paused at the door, his heart breaking. J.J. had backed up across the floor and retrieved his cleaning cloth. He rubbed a desktop with it violently, scattering a stack of papers to the floor.
“Damn it!” J.J. seethed, snatching the papers up to put them back. They kept slipping out of his fingers to flutter back to the floor.
“I’ll come back for you, son,” Jess said. “You’ve really been a lot of help to me. You did a good thing, talking to me. But don’t tell anyone what we talked about, okay? Please?”
J.J. was furiously trying to snatch the pages from the tile.
“I miss you, son.”
J.J. didn’t look up. He was gone again.
“DAMN IT!” he screamed.
Jess turned and walked away, the rain slashing him. He paused at his pickup and gazed back. J.J. kept his head down, picking up papers and dropping them like a demon.
Sunday, 7:16 P.M.
MONICA LOOKED up when the doorbell rang, and Swann scrambled to his feet from the couch. He had been on his cell phone with someone, another of his secret calls. Something about going back to his house again that night; Swann didn’t seem to want to do it.
They had not spoken since Swann showed her that he had her keys. She was simply waiting now, biding her time. When he left the room, she’d be out the door. She could borrow a car from a neighbor. Or get a ride with someone. But she wanted him to think he’d talked her out of that idea, so she sat silently. Let him think she’d reconsidered.
“You expecting someone?” he asked as he neared the door.
“Of course not,” she said, hoping it was news of Annie and William.
Swann bent and looked out the peephole. “Some man,” he said, then opened the door.
Monica didn’t recognize the wet cowboy on the front porch. He looked angry, though, the way he squinted inside like a gunfighter, like the sun was in his eyes.
“What can we do for you?” Swann asked.
“Are you Monica Taylor?” the man asked, shouting louder than he needed to, not acknowledging Swann. The rainfall was steady and loud behind him.
Intuitively, she knew it was about her children. She nodded.
“Then you must be Swann,” the man said, reaching back for something that was out of sight. Then he strode into the house holding a rifle in both of his hands. Before Swann could reach for the pistol in his belt, the man clubbed Swann hard in the face with the butt of the rifle. Swann staggered back, blood already gushing from his nose, his hands grasping at air, his feet tangling with her magazine rack. He fell into the wall, sliding down partway, taking a framed photograph of Annie with him. His elbow rested on the top of the couch and stopped him from falling all of the way to the floor. The man was in the living room now, straddling Swann, and to Monica’s horror, he reared back and clubbed Swann again in the head with a short, powerful stroke. Swann went limp, and rolled with his face to the wall, his weight pushing the couch out, and he crashed behind it on the floor. All she could see of Sw
ann were the soles of his shoes. The rest of him was wedged behind the couch.
The cowboy bent over and came up with Swann’s pistol, which he shoved into the front pocket of his Wranglers. Then he looked up, caught his breath.
Monica had not screamed, but had withdrawn into her chair, her feet under her, her fists at her mouth.
“He’ll live,” the man said, nodding his hat brim toward Swann. Then he looked right at her. “I’m Jess Rawlins. I’m here to take you to your kids.”
At the sound of his name, Monica felt her throat constrict. Jess Rawlins. She’d always known of this man. And here he was, in her own living room, there to rescue her.
Sunday, 8:21 P.M.
JIM HEARNE felt panic growing as the rain receded into cold mist and hung suspended in the air above the pavement of streets, and his tires sluiced through standing puddles. Something was going on in his town late on a Sunday night, but he hadn’t yet been able to figure out exactly what it was, how big it was, or how many people were involved. As with the feeling he had had in his living room, when he suddenly felt like an imposter in his own home, he drove through Kootenai Bay under the strong impression that despite the recognizable buildings and layout, he was a stranger in this town.
He swung his Suburban into the county building lot and parked it next to Sheriff Carey’s Blazer. He was grateful for locating the sheriff, since the two other men he had tried to find earlier had been gone. Lieutenant Singer was not at the task force room in the county building, or at his home. And Eduardo Villatoro had not been back to his hotel room since late afternoon.
Hearne got out of his vehicle and tried to calm himself by inhaling the moist air deeply into his lungs. He looked at his watch. He had accomplished exactly nothing for all of his running around, except to confirm that whatever was happening was happening someplace else, and he had no idea where that might be. Now he thought he might be in the right place, judging by the three network satellite trucks that took up most of the parking lot at the front of the building. There was a hive of activity. It was obvious they had all arrived within minutes of each other, and technicians were out on the pavement, jockeying for position. Some unfurled thick cables that snaked across the asphalt. Hearne recognized a celebrity reporter brightly lit by a portable bank of lights, and thought he looked shorter, thinner, and more frail than he did on TV. The man seemed to be waiting for somebody to tell him something in his earpiece. Looking at the trucks, the bustle of men and women, he feared for Kootenai Bay.
