Blue Heaven

by C. J. Box

  “But the employee died before he had a chance to testify in court,” Villatoro said.

  “Yeah, wasn’t that convenient?” Newkirk said darkly. “He gets caught in a cross fire while he’s buying a pack of cigarettes at a 7-Eleven. The clerk gets popped, the witness gets popped, and the robber empties the cash drawer and escapes scot-free. All they can see on the security tape is a big masked guy in black walking in and blasting away.”

  Villatoro let it sink in. “Gonzalez?” he asked.

  Newkirk nodded slightly. “And Swann was the investigating officer.”

  Jesus, Villatoro thought. It’s worse than I imagined.

  “Creating the charity was a master stroke, I agree,” Villatoro said. “Making small deposits in a bank in northern Idaho never attracted any attention at all for years. The only problem was tracing a few of the hundred-dollar bills back to here. You must not have realized that some of them could be traced to the robbery.”

  Newkirk turned, his face screwed up in contempt. “Of course we knew about the serial numbers on some of the hundreds. Me and Rodale were in the counting room, remember? We knew about that. Do you think we’re stupid?”

  “No,” Villatoro said, feeling outright fear rise up in his chest. He tried not to show it.

  “That’s where Tony Rodale screwed the pooch,” Newkirk said, his voice rising, his eyes flashing with either anger or tears, Villatoro couldn’t tell which. “He was the treasurer. He made the deposits. Singer had it all worked out. On a schedule, Tony made a cash deposit supposedly collected from random cops in L.A. and other places. But we knew about the hundreds, how a few of ’em were marked. So Tony’s job was to get in his car and drive all around the country to break the hundred-dollar bills in restaurants, or gas stations, or bars, or wherever. He told his wife he was going fishing, but his job was to cash the hundreds and deposit the change later. That’s all he fucking had to do.”

  Now, Villatoro started to understand. He thought of the mounted steelhead on Rodale’s wall, thought of the years Rodale had deceived his wife about his absences. Thought of the places of origin from some of the marked bills that had been identified, California, Nevada, Nebraska. All within a day or two driving distance of Kootenai Bay, but far enough from each other that no pattern could be established.

  “But the asshole got greedy,” Newkirk said. “Singer noticed that some of the deposits were off, and figured Tony was skimming, which he was. The idiot was using some of the hundreds to bet on football, of all things, with some lowlife bookie in Coeur d’Alene. Tony wouldn’t admit it, of course, but Singer found the bookie and shook him down and proved it to us.”

  Newkirk leaned across the car so his face was inches from Villatoro. When he talked, Villatoro could smell his sour whiskey breath.

  “Tony risked everything. Not just for himself, but for all of us by paying his debts to a bookie in stolen hundred-dollar bills. Our money. When Singer found out he was afraid it would be a matter of time before someone like you came up here, tracing those bills back.”

  “And here I am,” Villatoro said, not sure why he’d spoken.

  “Here you fucking are,” Newkirk said, as if in pain.

  “But where is Tony Rodale?”

  Newkirk started to speak, then looked away. Beads of sweat sparkled on his forehead. The anguished look on his face was lit by dash lights.

  “That’s what I’m going to show you,” Newkirk said.

  “Oh no,” Villatoro whispered. “You killed him.”

  “Not just me. All of us. The agreement was we all put a couple into him, so we were all equally responsible. All of us except for Swann, who was late.”

  Another murder, Villatoro thought. It was too overwhelming to process. Steve Nichols, the inside witness, the convenience store clerk. Now, one of their own.

  “It might have worked, too,” Newkirk was saying, “except that those two fucking kids saw us take Tony out. Hey, keep driving.”

  Villatoro hadn’t realized he had slowed the car to a crawl. Things were connecting in a way he had not anticipated. He felt as if all of the blood had drained from his hands and face.

  “The Taylor children,” Villatoro said. “Oh, my God.”

  “Everything keeps getting worse,” Newkirk said, and this time there were real tears streaking down his face. “One crime, one perfectly planned crime. We were set for life. Then Tony fucked up, and those kids saw us, then the UPS guy. I feel like I’m already in hell.” His voice cracked. “In fact, I think hell would feel nice and cool to me right now.”

  Villatoro sped up but realized his hands were shaking. He had trouble staying in his lane. What did Newkirk’s reference to a UPS man mean?

  “This is so much bigger than I had imagined,” he said.

  Newkirk’s reaction surprised him. The ex-cop laughed bitterly, then wiped tears from his face with his sleeve before reaching behind him to withdraw his black semiautomatic. He aimed it at Villatoro, shoving the muzzle into his neck.

  “It’s about to get bigger,” Newkirk said softly, his voice sincere. “I’m sorry I’ve got to do this, man. Especially since you were a cop yourself.” It was as if Newkirk could not force himself to stop what he was doing, what was in motion, even though perhaps he wanted to.

  “Slow down and turn here,” Newkirk said, nodding toward a wet black mailbox on the side of the pavement marking a dirt road.

  “What are you doing?” Villatoro asked, his voice stronger than he thought it would be.

  “Turn here,” Newkirk said, with more force.

  “Someone is coming,” Villatoro said, nodding toward a pair of headlights approaching a quarter mile away on the highway.

  “Shit, I wonder who that is.”

  “They’ll see us,” Villatoro said. “They’ll see the gun.”

  Newkirk lowered the weapon but jammed it into Villatoro’s jacket beneath his armpit. He hissed, “I said turn, goddammit.”

  The road he wanted them to take was a two-lane dirt road pooled with rainwater that inclined up the hill into the trees.

  “I don’t think this little car will make it,” Villatoro said. “We don’t have any clearance, and the road goes up the hill.”

  “Take it fast,” Newkirk said, clearly worried. “Don’t slow down.”

  “Go!” Newkirk yelled, jamming the gun hard into Villatoro’s ribs. “Go, now!”

  As Villatoro floored it and drove up the hill, the rear tires fishtailing in mud, he recalled the name on the mailbox near the road, the name of the owner of the house they would soon be approaching: SWANN.

  With a strange kind of calm, perhaps the calm of shock, Villatoro thought, I’m going to die.

  Sunday, 10:01 P.M.

  JESS WAS picking up the telephone to try to reach Buddy again when he saw the lights of a car blinking through trees on his access road. He hung up the receiver and walked across the kitchen for his rifle, glancing into the living room, where Monica, Annie, and William were huddled up on the couch, talking softly.

  He leaned into the room. “Turn off the lights and don’t open the door unless it’s me,” he said calmly. “Someone is coming down the hill.” He reprimanded himself for not taking a chain up to the gate and locking it closed.

  Monica turned her face to him. It drained of color.

  “There’s only one car,” Jess said. “Please, now. Turn off the lights.”

  Annie disentangled from her mother and bounded across the room to flip the light switch. On the way back, she turned off the table lamp.

  “It may not be anything,” Jess said, trying to reassure them.

  “Where are you going?” William asked. “Are you coming back?”

  “Sure,” Jess said, picking up the Winchester, turning off the lights in the kitchen, and feeling his way through the mudroom to the screen door.

  HIS BOOTS crunched in the gravel as he walked across the ranch yard. The pole light in the corrals threw a pool of blue that lengthened and deepened the shadows. Jess
didn’t have time to turn it off, judging by how quickly the car was approaching. So he walked away from it, to the side of the barn. From there, in deep shadow, he should be able to see the car and who was in it as well as the front of the house. Noticing that someone had left a light on in the bathroom, he cursed silently.

  The car approached quickly, and there was a flash of brake lights before the engine was shut off. Jess timed the sound of working the lever action on the rifle to the car door’s opening. Looking down at his rifle, he saw a wink of brass as the cartridge slid into the chamber. He raised the rifle but didn’t aim.

  As the door opened, the interior lights of the car showed one occupant, not three or four. The occupant was Jim Hearne.

  Jess frowned in the dark, puzzled.

  Hearne stepped out of the vehicle but kept the door open. The banker faced the front of Rawlins’s house, and called, “Jess? Jess Rawlins? Are you in there?”

  “Behind you,” Jess said from the shadow.

  The sound of his voice made Hearne spin and duck. “You scared me,” said Hearne.

  “What do you need?” Jess asked, stepping out from the side of the barn but remaining in the shadows. While he wanted to trust Jim, he didn’t want to expose himself just yet.

  “Jess, most of your lights are off, and I didn’t know if you were home. You didn’t answer when I called earlier. You’ve got to hear what’s going on.”

  Jess lowered the Winchester and approached Hearne. He saw Hearne’s eyes shift to the rifle.

  “Jesus, Jess—were you going to shoot me?”

  “Maybe. Let’s go inside.”

  “SO ALL of ’em are up there now,” Jess said, shaking his head and sipping from the mug of coffee he had just brewed.

  “All except for Newkirk—I didn’t see him. But it was obvious they were waiting for someone.”

  “Then what?”

  Hearne shrugged. Again, he turned in his chair and looked through the doorway into the living room, where the Taylors were. “I still can’t believe they’re here,” he said softly. “What a relief.”

  Jess nodded. He was rehashing what Hearne had told him about the sheriff giving up, about the FBI coming, about Fiona Pritzle and her damned gossip. About the conclave of the ex-cops at Swann’s house.

  “Maybe we should gather everyone up,” Hearne said, gesturing toward the Taylors, “and make a run to town.”

  “Where would we go?”

  Hearne thought for a second. “Maybe if the sheriff saw everyone together …”

  Jess shook his head. “What if we can’t find him? What if he calls in Singer? No, I feel safer here until we know what’s going on. All we have to do is hunker down and wait until the morning, from what you’re telling me. We can explain everything to the Feds when they get here.”

  Hearne said, “Maybe we could go to my house?”

  “Either way, we would need to drive straight down the state highway, right in front of Swann’s place. What if they put up a roadblock? Or have a couple of men in the trees waiting for us?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Hearne said sullenly.

  “I know one thing,” Jess said, standing up and tossing the rest of his coffee into the sink. “I don’t like speculation. We’ll just drive ourselves crazy with it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see what those boys are up to,” Jess said.

  JESS HEARD Hearne come outside behind him. He turned, said, “Keep that shotgun handy while I’m gone.”

  “You’re going up there? To Swann’s house? What if they see you coming?”

  Jess grinned. “I’m not going to drive.”

  It took Hearne a few beats to understand. Then: “I’ll help you saddle up.”

  IN THE BARN, Jess shoved his rifle into the saddle scabbard and swung up on Chile. Hearne stepped aside, nearly backing into the pregnant cow in the stall.

  “I can get there quicker overland,” Jess said, turning his horse toward the open stall door. “Straight across my meadows and up into the timber on the side of Swann’s place. They’ll be looking for headlights, not a rider.”

  “If you aren’t back in an hour,” Hearne said, “I’m going to pile the Taylors into my car and go to town.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Jess said over his shoulder as he walked the red dun out of the barn. “Hand me that length of chain there so I can lock the gate on my way. And in the meanwhile, keep an eye on that cow. She’s ready to pop.”

  AFTER LOOPING the chain around the gate and snapping two big locks through the links, Jess turned Chile around and goosed her into the trees until they emerged in a meadow, where he spurred her on. The sound of hoofbeats in the dark lulled and energized Jess at the same time. He asked Chile to settle into a slow lope, trusting his horse to see in the dark better than he could. Nevertheless, he clamped his hat down tight and hunched forward in the saddle in case a tree branch tried to dismount him. The rain had begun to drizzle again.

  He rode across the meadow and up into the dripping pine trees. As they climbed, he glanced over his shoulder at his house down in the saddle slope, picturing the Taylors on the couch in the dark and Hearne sitting on the porch with the shotgun across his lap, looking very much not like a banker.

  Sunday, 10:32 P.M.

  THE LITTLE CAR made it up the hill and the road leveled out. Villatoro could see the lone porch light of a house blinking through the trees. He could no longer feel his fingers, or his feet. A sense of utter calm sedated him.

  “Stop here,” Newkirk said.

  When he did, Newkirk leaned over him and pulled out the keys. “Get out.”

  Villatoro opened the door and unfolded himself. Cold rain stung his face and sizzled through the trees. There was some kind of pen in front of him, and huge, dark forms scuttled behind the slats of a fence. He heard a grunting noise that sounded like a man, then a squeal. Pigs. They were pigs.

  A big man, Gonzalez, wearing a raincoat and pointing a pistol at him, stepped out from the shadows near a shed.

  Gonzalez said, “Good job, Newkirk.”

  “I’ve got a wife and a daughter,” Villatoro said. His voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

  Gonzalez stopped and leveled his gun with two hands, the muzzle a few feet from Villatoro’s face.

  He heard Newkirk say, “Sorry, man.”

  He heard Gonzalez say, “You going to do this or am I?”

  He heard Newkirk say, with a choke in his voice, “You do it.”

  “You never should have come out here, old man,” Gonzalez said to Villatoro. “You should have stayed in the minor leagues. Shit, you’re retired, right? What’s wrong with you?”

  Villatoro looked up and saw a silver ring hanging in the dark inches from his eye. It was the mouth of the muzzle. He wondered if he should strike out, try to hit someone, try to kick someone, try to run. But he had never been a fighter. The two fights he had had as a youth had both ended badly, with him cowering on the ground while being punched and spit upon. He didn’t have the mind of a fighter, preferring reason to force. In thirty years, he’d never been attacked or forced to draw his weapon. Oh, he thought, if I could live my life again I would learn how to fight! He had a strange thought: Do I keep my eyes open or do I close them? Hot tears stung his eyes, and he angrily wiped them away.

  “Fuck this,” Gonzalez said, and the ring dropped away. “You need to finish the job you started. That’s what the lieutenant told you, right?”

  “I guess,” Newkirk said, sighing.

  “Then finish it.”

  Villatoro felt his stomach begin to boil sourly and hoped he wouldn’t get sick.

  “Take care of this guy,” Gonzalez said, turning toward the house and walking away. “Take care of this fake cop.” Then he laughed softly. Villatoro was humiliated, and angry. But most of all, he was terrified.

  Villatoro felt Newkirk’s gun in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

  “Walk down to
the end of the pen along the rails,” Newkirk said, his voice weak. “And don’t look back at me.”

  He’s going to shoot me in the back of the head. That’s better than in the face.

  As he stumbled forward, he sensed one of the hogs, the huge one, walking along with him on the other side of the fence. He could hear the pig grunt a little with each breath.

  Villatoro’s shoe caught in a root, and he staggered, but Newkirk grabbed the collar of his shirt and held him up. “Watch where you’re going, goddamn you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Shut up!”

  Newkirk pushed him ahead until they were under a canopy of trees at the corner of the corral. He kept his hand on Villatoro’s collar, guiding him ahead. It was dry there. Villatoro could feel the crunch of pine needles under his soles although the tree dripped all around them.

  Any second now. He could barely hear the drip of the trees because of the roar in his ears. And something else …

  “Mister, I’m ready to shoot your eye out of the back of your head.” It was not Newkirk who spoke, Villatoro realized. It was a voice from the trees, from the dark. The voice was deep and familiar, but Villatoro couldn’t place it, and for a moment he thought it was his own imagination, his brain trying to give him a second or two of false hope.

  But Villatoro felt the gun twitch on the small of his back and heard Newkirk say, “Who is it?”

  Another sound, the snort of a horse somewhere in the dark cover of the trees.

  “The guy who’s about to blow your head off.”

  Villatoro felt Newkirk’s grip harden on his collar, but the gun left his back. There really was someone out there! And the voice, it was that rancher he had talked to at breakfast. Rawlins.

  The gun returned, this time pressed to Villatoro’s temple.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Newkirk said, his voice rising, “but if you don’t back off, he’s a dead man.”

  “He’s a dead man anyway from the look of things,” the rancher said. “So fire away. Then there’ll be two dead. Simple as that.”